


Pieces of Me

by Aiyestel



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Burn, Understanding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-24 05:12:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 34,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aiyestel/pseuds/Aiyestel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as a fill for The Hobbit Kmeme. OP's prompt: Kíli is not like other Dwarves. He's always been a little too much and a little too wrong. He struggles with this his entire life until someone comes along and shows him the truth</p><p>"You are terrifying and strange and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love."</p><p>Ratings and tags will likely change as more chapters are added. <b>Starting with Chapter 8 there are SPOILERS for The Desolation of Smaug</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rolling Hills and Round Doors

He finds some piece of himself in this land of green, rolling hills and round, wooden doors. It’s a shock and it slides into place so easily that it feels wrong at first. So much of his life has been spent trying to smooth rough edges and hide away the things that made him less of a dwarf. He couldn’t make his beard grow in thicker or make his nose or ears larger. He was too proficient with a bow to give it up. There were far too many things that didn’t fit, that forced their way into holes that were never meant to hold them. He never expected to find somewhere a part of him might not be so out of place.

The inhabitants of this peaceful, little place are strange with their bare faces and round bellies. There are no jewels adorning their homes and the only gold in their clothes is in the form of thread, but still they seem content. They laugh and drink and smoke. They visit with their neighbors over picket fences and chase loose chickens back to their coops. They eye the strangers traversing through their lands with suspicion but they do not stop them. That would take too much effort, and the dwarves seem to pose no immediate threat. Everywhere he looks there are children, gaggles of them. They peer out from round windows and around the trunks of the wide oak trees. They giggle and dance away when he waves. He knows he’s not the only one to marvel at their abundance.

This place is wholly strange and wondrous.

It has been many decades since he was their age. Many long years since he laughed with the complete carelessness that youth granted. They were a long-lived race but the burdens of their forebears were laid on them young. Time waits for no one, and it does not care that a child should have his time to grow and learn and play without the cares of the world set heavy on his shoulders. It calls for retribution. It sings out for the reclaiming of a lost home. It will whisper to anyone with the ear to listen.

He was raised in the mountains, grew up surrounded by stone walls and the legacy of a family carved out of the rock beneath their feet. Life was not easy for the exiled line of Durin and though they had found refuge in the west the memory of Erebor lay like a weight on their hearts. It didn’t matter that he had never seen it, that he’d never known any home but the one in Ered Luin. It was their inheritance and their burden.

For as long as he can remember he would close his eyes at night and dream of wide open skies, of lands stretching out before his feet. It called to him and he wondered if it was the way his kinsmen described the stone singing beneath their own. He listened intently for that song, and he convinced himself he heard it, but if he ever truly did it was always a distant murmur. No one else had ever had dreams like his and it seemed to unsettle them when he asked. Despite the whispers that he was as slow as he was odd he knew that they didn’t ease his way through a world that he should have fit into. His differences made others uncomfortable and it didn’t take long for him to stop asking altogether.

But Kíli was not touched like they rumored him to be. He knew they looked at him differently, whispered about him when they thought he couldn’t hear. But his eyes were sharp and his ears, though small, were keen. There was little that escaped his notice. When his uncle had mentioned his quest to reclaim their ancestral home he knew it was his chance to escape the ideas painted of him. Maybe if he proved himself, maybe if they reclaimed their home and he became a hero they wouldn’t think he was so unlike them.

Fíli nudges him out of his thoughts as he bangs his fist against the round, green door.

When it finally opens with a soft creak they’re looking upon a hobbit that appears as if he had been interrupted while preparing for sleep. His curls are tousled and he looks put out even before they’ve bowed and introduced themselves.

“You must be, Mr. Boggins!” Kíli exclaims with delight and their host seems less than impressed.

“It’s _Baggins_ ,” the hobbit corrects, but they’re already pushing their way in through the door and the smial is unlike anything Kíli had expected. The craftsmanship is solid; the tooling in the round wooden doorways speaks to a skill one would never expect of the soft people in this green land. There are no precious metal adornments or jewels set among the molding but Kíli can tell it is made with love and care. It is all very different from what he’s used to but it’s pleasant—warm even.

“It’s nice, this place,” he says. “Did you do it yourself?”

The hobbit looks up from where Fíli is unloading his weapons into his arms and answers in the negative in the same breath that he protests at Kíli wiping his feet on—“That’s my mother’s glory box! Can you please not do that?!”

The hobbit is fussy about his things, but it’s amusing rather than annoying. He worries over his plates and bowls. He faints at the thought of going out his door, though in all honesty Bofur’s bit about the dragon probably didn’t help. It’s no huge surprise when he refuses to sign the parchment that Thorin thrusts into his hands but if Kíli’s honest with himself he’s a bit disappointed.

After their host has disappeared down one of the many hallways the company spreads out and begins to bed down for the night. The morning will come too soon along with the start of what promises to be an arduous journey. Despite that and the fact that Fíli and he had been on the road for a week already Kíli wanders the halls, too intrigued to sleep so soon.

Mantles were lined with framed pictures of smiling faces. Two old pipes, lovingly cleaned and well-used sit below a painting of two hobbits who shared many of the same features as Master Baggins. _His parents_ , Kíli muses to himself. In the kitchen the pottery they had thrown about earlier much to the hobbit’s chagrin had been polished and neatly replaced; not by them—their host must have done it while they were discussing their journey.  He remembers the protest, the shout about it being his mother’s.

“What are you doing?”

Thorin is watching him from the doorway and Kíli flushes to have been found out. He feels like a kid again, caught in the forge without permission or sneaking off to the market instead of sitting through Balin’s lessons.

“I was just having a look around,” he admits.

“You should get your sleep instead of pawing through the halfling’s knick-knacks,” Thorin admonishes, but his tone is gentle, as gentle as he gets now. When Kíli nods with his eyes still firmly on his feet his uncle pulls him into a hug. “Come, we’ve an early start and your mother would have my hide if you didn’t get some sleep while you can.”

He lets himself be guided back to the living room where they had spread their bed rolls in front of the hearth. He wants to ask if they see the same things he does, but he knows from experience that the inquiries will be ill-received. He saw the way his uncle regarded the hobbit as well. _He would be a burden_ , he’d heard Thorin tell Dwalin in muttered Khuzdul. _Best he stay here._

Kíli wants to disagree but that will earn him nothing but his uncle’s ire.

 _Look around_ , he wants to tell them. _He is living in memories!_

Fíli’s already half asleep when Kíli settles in next to him, but he turns over and bumps his forehead against Kíli’s shoulder. “Alright?” he asks around a yawn.

“Alright,” Kíli assures him even if he can’t assure himself.

Still, when they set off the next morning before the sun has fully risen something nags at him.

He doesn’t figure it out until the rolling green hills begin to give way to woodlands and a shout catches up to them. The hobbit—Bilbo Baggins—is running towards them, contract in hand.

“This is a surprise,” Fíli murmurs to him as Balin reviews the contract and welcomes the newest member of their company with a wink.

“Is it?” Kíli asks, his voice distant. He misses the look his brother gives him.

His thoughts wander back to a cozy hobbit hole, and to a soft creature that should have liked nothing better than to stay there before his warm hearth, surrounded by his heirlooms. Maybe there was more to the little hobbit than the rest of the company seemed to think.

Maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all.

 

 

 

Among a company of rather nosy individuals it’s nearly impossible not to overhear things. Even though his mother always told him it was rude to eavesdrop—though she was especially practiced at the art—Kíli can’t help himself when Gandalf begins speaking about hobbits to an inquisitive Ori. Bilbo, not to be outdone by the old wizard, joins in to add his own two cents, seeing as he’s the hobbit after all.

“Oh no!” Bilbo was saying, “As I told Gandalf—not that he listened—we hobbits are none too keen on adventures. Make you late for dinner, they will.”

The grey wizard stops puffing on his pipe and looks over at his companion. “I listened, my dear Bilbo. I always listen.”

“Listen and disregard,” the hobbit grumbles and Ori bites back a smile. “Hobbits are a simple people and are quite happy in the Shire. We value books and a warm meal, or seven, and good ale,” he explains to the young dwarf who looks at him with unmasked interest. The youngest Ri brother has a preference for ancient tomes and scripts to swords and axes, but he has found his place among their people and company. He may look soft in his knitted scarves but no one doubted his worth. His beard grows and he had found his comfort in the mountain’s embrace.

But Ori doesn’t ask the question Kíli wants the answer to, instead asking about tradition among hobbits.

Kíli listens to their exchange but doesn’t urge his pony forward to join in. He drinks in Bilbo’s explanation about their parties and markets. About them giving gifts on birthdays instead of receiving them. About their seven daily meals. There’s fondness in Bilbo’s voice and a longing Kíli’s not sure he’s ever truly known. When the hobbit looks back over his shoulder it’s not to glance at the dwarves behind him. His eyes settle on some far distant place. “I wonder why he came then.”

“What are you on about?”

Kíli looks up at his brother and realizes he had been musing to himself aloud. “Oh, nothing.”

“You know you can tell me anything,” Fíli persists and earns a grateful smile.

His older brother had always been steadfast in his support of Kíli. In the eyes of the fair-haired Durin he was never less of a dwarf for his undesirable features or odd habits. He always had an ally in the form of his brother and it had been a lifeline to him in more ways than one.

“Kí.”

“I know,” Kíli says and shrugs. “It’s nothing. Really.”

If anyone notices that he is quieter than normal they don’t say anything though he doesn’t miss Fíli’s questioning glances when his older brother thinks he isn’t looking.  If what Bilbo says is true then he should have had no reason to run out his door. He should have had every reason to stay safe in his home. So why would he sign the contract? Why would he come?

He’s not left with much time to ponder it that evening when two ponies manage to disappear with nary a sound. Even when Bilbo appears out of the falling darkness clutching two bowls of stew Kíli is too preoccupied with the missing ponies to realize this is the first time he’s had as good an opportunity to talk to their burglar.

“Shouldn’t we tell Thorin?” Bilbo asks when they tell him what has happened.

Fíli immediately cuts in. “Let’s not worry him,” he says. “As our official burglar we were hoping you would look into it.”

The look on his face says he wanted to do anything but look into it but he swallows hard and casts his eyes around. “Well I suppose…” He steps up beside Fíli and gestures to the uprooted tree. “It had to have been something big, to have done that—you didn’t hear anything?” he asks looking up at the older of the brothers. The look on his face says he has all sorts of questions focused around what exactly had distracted them so thoroughly that they didn’t notice two ponies being carted off.

When it’s clear he isn’t going to get an explanation, or even an acknowledgment he blows out a breath. “Well something large had to have uprooted these trees.” Kíli makes a noise of agreement from behind him. “Something large and possibly quite dangerous…”

He doesn’t know how right he is.

Mountain trolls are slow, and stupid, but there are three of them and only one of their burglar. It shouldn’t be a big surprise when they catch him, he’s unsuited for dangerous situations, and they had sent him into danger without so much as a knife. He has a way with words but his three captors don’t have the wits to be fooled. Kíli knows he has to make amends and he can’t do that if their burglar gets made into a stew by the trolls. He doesn’t think he just acts.

“What were you thinking?” his uncle hisses at him later, after they’ve been freed from their sacks and he’s pulled both of his nephews into a tight, if short, hug. “You could have gotten yourself killed rushing in like that alone.”

He wants to protest, it seemed only right to leap to the hobbit’s defense, but his uncle isn’t looking for an explanation or an excuse. No, after seventy-odd years Kíli knows Thorin is only looking for him to agree and promise not to do it again—until he does it again. So Kíli gives his uncle what he wants with a nod and mumbled promise and the matter is set behind them.

There is another he owes but there is no time for it in the moments that follow. They are pursued through the plains and it is only by the quick thinking of not one wizard but two that they manage to escape at all, even if escape means finding refuge with the elves.

Thorin’s irritation sets everyone on edge even as they settle in for their stay. Gandalf seems insistent that the help they need to read the map will only be found here and while it would please Thorin to no end to set their backs to the unwelcomed hospitality they can’t risk crossing the mountains if in doing so they leave the only person who might have the skill to tell them where the door lies. Kíli doesn’t mind so much. Aside from the green food and interesting definition of music it’s not such a bad place, and they can sleep easily for a change.

“Thank you.”

The voice startles him from where he’d been leaning over a railing watching the river dash among the rocks far below. Bilbo had approached without a sound and was standing at the railing just to his right.

“You—I—What?”

The hobbit smiles and leans against the railing at his side. “I meant to thank you for coming for me when the trolls caught me. You rushed in on your own, and you didn’t have to.”

It takes Kíli several long moments before he’s assured himself that the hobbit is being sincere. “But I meant to apologize to you!” he exclaims and they both stare at each other for a long second as each processes what the other had said.

“Well then perhaps you can accept my thanks, I will accept your apology and we can be done with it?” Bilbo suggests, garnering a nod from the young dwarf.

Kíli wants to ask all of his questions at once and Bilbo looks as if he doesn’t want to leave but the silence stretches between them and the hobbit finally clears his throat and bobs his head, “Right then, good talk.”

The question is out of Kíli’s mouth before he has time to phrase it in a way that doesn’t leave Bilbo stuttering to a stop with his mouth agape and irritation flickering in his hazel eyes. “Why did you even come?”

Kíli wants to kick himself. He hears how it sounds but that’s not how he meant it and he tries to stop the other man but the hobbit is already marching away and Kíli’s protests die on his tongue.

 _You moron_ , he scolds himself and shakes his head.


	2. Misunderstandings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kíli and Bilbo work through the misunderstanding and learn new things about each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay in posting this second chapter. My dog passed away and I'm in the middle of a move so it has been a rough week. Thanks for sticking with me.

_Of all the dwarves in all the land!_ Bilbo fumes as he stomps away.

It had settled in quite soon after they had departed the Shire that to the dwarves he was more a source of comic relief than someone that had anything to do with burgling. He was a fish out water in the purest sense, and quite frequently he felt like that made him seem like a burden more than anything else. He was sure Thorin thought so. But Kíli…he hadn’t thought that of Kíli.

 _Until now!_ Bilbo finds himself in one of the lower gardens, a place blessedly dwarf-free. _Why did I even come!? The nerve!_

Before Gandalf had come along he’d never had any intention of running out his door. Well, he supposes that isn’t entirely true. But surely all hobbit tweens run around in the woods pretending to be off on grand adventures. He might have never seen any others, but that didn’t mean anything. And yes, the stories his mother had woven with words at bedtime had sparked a deep curiosity but he was a Baggins. He belonged in the Shire.

At least that’s what he had convinced himself.

When thirteen strangers, and that bloody wizard, had invited themselves over to empty his pantry and destroy his plumbing he had tried hard to hold onto his irritation, even though his curiosity sparked as they spoke of their lost home far to the east. The dwarves were a secretive race, that he knew, and that was about all he knew. They were folk of the mountain and skilled with metal. They were travelling smiths and weapons masters. But more than that he did not know.

And all these weeks on the road with them hadn’t garnered him any more knowledge, at least not on their race as a whole. But he had noticed things about each of his companions, things that set them apart and things they shared in common.  

But the dark-haired brother had been different. Kíli had been quick to smile and even quicker to joke with him instead of at him. And where the others wielded their axes and swords with a certain skill that should not be surprising, Kili used a bow, though he lacked none of the efficiency or skill of his fellow dwarves. He hadn’t felt like he was quite so out of his element around the young dwarf.

In the Shire he wasn’t dead weight, but he never truly fit in. At fifty-one he was considered an oddity to his fellow hobbits. He had reached his majority decades ago but remained unmarried, which was about as strange as a hobbit could get, save from venturing out of the Shire on an adventure with a wizard and thirteen dwarves. He had sealed his fate as the community outcast as soon as he had stepped over the border of the Shire.

Maybe some part of him had hoped he would find a place among the thirteen strangers, and maybe part of him had thought that Kíli would be the first one to accept him. It was a foolish notion and he knew it but he had always taken after his mother’s side; he’d been a dreamer and full of wishes since he was a fauntling.

He blows out a sigh and stares up at the star-filled sky.

 _Fool of a Took_.

 

 

 

If they had spent any amount of time together before, Kíli would swear that Bilbo was avoiding him. While that still might be true he spent no less time with Bilbo than he ever had but still he regrets his words. Impulsive and brash. He’s always had a way of speaking before he fully thinks things through. In the mountains it was a front, a way to distract others from his differences with a fast tongue and brilliant smile. Here it was just a habit he found hard to break.

He can’t think of a time he’s regretted it more.

“What did you do to anger Master Baggins?” Fíli asks one night several days after they’ve come to stay in Rivendell waiting for the crescent moon to reveal the location of the door in Thorin’s map.

Kíli looks up suddenly, eyes darting to his brother then to the hobbit who has his back firmly to the both of them and was well out of earshot anyway. Was it that obvious? Had Bilbo said something? “You know?”

His brother bumps their shoulders together. “Look who you’re talking to. Of course I know. Not to mention every time your eyes settle on our esteemed, little burglar you get that look like someone kicked your puppy.”

“I don’t have a puppy,” Kíli mutters. “And it’s not like we interacted much before now anyway.”

Fíli sighs and ruffles his hair affectionately. “Come-on, you can tell me,” Fíli encourages him.

“I said something to Bilbo, but I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”

“You rarely do,” his brother teases but when it doesn’t garner him the usual grin he stills. Kíli is obviously troubled. “Have you told him this?”

How was he supposed to talk to someone who wouldn’t acknowledge his presence? And what happens if he buries his foot further into his mouth? It is a distinct possibility. He shakes his head and busies himself with lighting his pipe.

“It will work itself out, little brother.”

Of course Fíli is right but that was no immediate consolation. Bilbo seems content to ignore him, and Kíli, as troubled as he is, feels powerless to do anything but let him.

That’s why it’s a bit of a shock when Bilbo bridges the gap first, the next night, when they are sitting beneath a darkening sky enjoying a late meal. Fíli offers the hobbit a small smile as he approaches and wordlessly accepts the plate of food he is offered, not-so-subtly kicking Kíli in the back when he does. Kíli barks out a protest and glares up at his brother who nods at Bilbo as he walks off to talk to Balin.

“Are you hungry?”

Kíli accepts the food wordlessly, hoping the tiny smile he offers the hobbit is thanks enough. He doesn’t want to open his mouth again and somehow offend the other man just by offering his thanks. They stare at each other for a few moments before the hobbit moves to leave.

“I’m not just a Baggins,” Bilbo says suddenly, stopping mid-turn making the firelight bounce off of his curls in a way that catches Kíli’s eye. “I’m a Took too, and sometimes that gets the best of me.”

And with that he’s off again, and Kíli watches him with confusion and a sense of relief as he settles in one of the alcoves on the far side of the open veranda where they had set up camp. He’s fairly certain that was some form of an apology, not that he was owed any.

“What did he say?” Fíli asks, settling in beside him.

“I’m….not sure.”

A deep chuckle from behind them has both brothers careening around to find the grey wizard who had managed to disappear for much of their time in Rivendell. “What Mr. Baggins was explaining is that while he is a Baggins by name he takes after his mother’s side of the family, the Tooks, in temperament—probably more than he’d care to admit. He lets his temper get the best of him at times but he is quick to forgive as well.”

“Gandalf, why did he come?” Kíli asks. Perhaps the wizard can sate his curiosity.

There is laughter in the old man’s face but he shakes his head. “That is a question you’ll have to pose to our burglar. I’m afraid I cannot speak for him.” The wizard smiles around the stem of his pipe. “There are many reasons he might have chosen to join this company, and still many more why he might not have. I could fathom a guess but it would likely be wrong because hobbits, as I’ve come to find, seem so very simple yet after you think you’ve learned all there is to know they will still find a way to surprise you.”

Surprise seems to be a recurring theme if Kíli has anything to say about it. He isn’t sure how he finds himself in the library the next morning while the majority of the dwarves are still dead to the world but he can recognize an odd occurrence when he sees one. It has been many long years since he’s been in a library, still many more since he stepped foot in one willingly. This place is larger than any they’d had in Ered Luin. There are books on every surface, carefully placed onto each shelf. They span the length and breadth of the room and he thinks Ori would probably never come out again if he sees this place.

His bare feet make hardly a sound on the smooth stone floor and he’s brushing  his hair out of his eyes when he comes across Bilbo with a book splayed across his lap and a cup of tea in hand. The hobbit looks up at his approach and seemingly can’t help the laugh that spills out at the sight of the sleep-tousled dwarf.

“What?!”

“You just don’t look awake,” Bilbo explains as Kíli tries to stifle a yawn. He offers the dwarf his cup of tea and Kíli is too surprised to do anything but take it and lift it to his lips. “It’s good, this.”

“Lemon and chamomile,” the hobbit offers.

For dwarves the act of sharing food and drink from one another’s plate or cup was an intimate one, something shared between the closest of friends and kin. To accept was a sign of respect and trust, and the customs of his people demanded he refuse but it was too late now, and it had been such an honest gesture that Kíli found himself unwilling to listen to tradition.

“May I join you, Master Baggins?”

“Only if you’ll call me Bilbo.”

Kíli sinks to the ground with a radiant smile. “Bilbo then.”

They sit there in companionable silence as Bilbo reads and Kíli sips at the hobbit’s tea. It’s not normal, this feeling of contentment and being calm enough not to feel the need to be talking or moving. When he has time to stop or to think back home it leaves an opening for the other dwarves to notice just how hard he tries to be the person he isn’t and how much it never really works. But Bilbo doesn’t seem to judge him; at least he doesn’t know their customs well enough for that.

“The other night I tried to explain why I lost my temper and I realize that you may have no idea what I meant.”

Bilbo’s voice is soft but it echoes in the large room and Kíli jerks around, the cup tinkling to the stone floor as he holds up his hands in a gesture of peace. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me!”

He’s interrupted by a laugh. “It’s hardly going to put me out, and how can you accept my explanation if you don’t understand it?”

“I suppose that’s true,” Kíli concedes. Part of him thinks he should tell Bilbo that Gandalf, as mysterious as he was, offered some insight but he wants to hear the other man speak. “But first, you must know that I didn’t mean for what I said to come out the way I said it.”

That admission garners him a smile. “It is alright if it did. I know I’m not like you all, and you are right to question my reasons for being here.”

Kíli protests. “I don’t doubt you! Really I don’t!” And it isn’t as if he has any ground to stand on to question their burglar’s decision to come on their quest.

“Thank you Kíli,” Bilbo says. He looks out the window for a long moment as if gathering his train of thought. “Well you know I’m a Baggins, at least my father was a Baggins. Bungo Baggins—”

Kíli stills and looks up at the hobbit, “You mean like the pony we named Bungo?” he asks in a small voice, earning a laugh. “The very same,” the hobbit confirms but doesn’t seem put off by it. Someone had read the name somewhere in the hobbit’s smial. Of course they should have known it was a family member.

“Anyway, the Bagginses are very respectable hobbits. They are predictable to a tee and prefer the familiar to the unknown. They are very well thought of and you will find that most of them live in or near Hobbiton.” He chuckles to himself and Kíli wants to ask what the joke is but he doesn’t want to interrupt. “On the other hand the Tooks are more adventurous and there wasn’t a hobbit that went off on some adventure that didn’t have Took blood in them. They can be quick to irritate but like all hobbits they don’t hold grudges long. I think it’s impossible.”

“And you said your father was a Baggins, so that means your mother was a Took?”

“Yes, Belladonna Took.”

There was a smile in his voice when he spoke of her, of both of them, but there was something else. Something buried beneath the fond recollections. Kíli shifts when Bilbo lapses into silence, staring up at the other man who seems lost in thought.

The hobbit’s eyes are wide and unseeing, he’s focused on something distant. Maybe a warm home in a far, green land. Maybe a time when laughter filled his smial; laughter that wasn’t that of thirteen strangers but belonged to his mother and father, who were beyond his reach now.

“Bilbo?”

He blinks several times before his eyes lock with Kíli’s. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to do that!” Kíli exclaims and flinches when his voice carries. “It’s just—I mean there’s nothing to apologize for.”

The smile he earns is genuine, a soft tilt of Bilbo’s lips that speaks more than words.

“Well, I’m sure that’s plenty more than you wanted to know about me or hobbits in general,” Bilbo chuckles to himself. “I get the feeling I’m not supposed to ask about you dwarves, but…” He trails off with a shake of his head and bounces to his feet, swooping down to snatch up the teacup from next to Kíli’s knee. “Shall we find some more tea?”

The hobbit navigates the maze of halls like he’d been there before down to a lower kitchen where an elf produced another cup and sent them off with a tray complete with a kettle and some biscuits with honey.

Kíli startles when Bilbo thanks the woman in elvish.

“ _No veren_ ,” she replies with a smile.

The hobbit gives a little bow and motions for Kíli to follow him. “Have you been here before?” he asks when they’re well away.

“No, but my mother visited Rivendell and spoke of it to me at great length when I was younger.” Many nights had been spent before the hearth, her voice rich and loving as she recalled the tales of her adventures to her young son while her husband sat nearby with a smile on his face and a book in his hands. She had painted pictures of this place with her words and it had never left him.

They don’t return to the library; instead they settle down on one of the many verandas.

“Should I change?” Kíli asks Bilbo as several elves pass by, giving the two lingering glances.

“You are hardly indecent, and I’m barefoot as well,” Bilbo replies without looking up, his attention on pouring the tea. “Though your hair is probably startling them a little.”

His hair has always been one of those points of contention between him and the others. It’s too fine to hold braids well and it’s always been messy. Where most dwarves weave intricate plaits that speak of their lineage and bonds, his own locks remain unruly and unbraided. He has a clasp from his mother, one that matches Fíli’s, but it is the only ornament he is able to anchor to it.

“Kíli?”

Brown eyes meet hazel ones and Kíli realizes he had been trying to smooth his hair down with little success. “If it offends them I can try to do something with it.”

Bilbo tugs Kíli’s hands down and smiles. “And why should you care if you offend them? I was given to believe you lot don’t care much for the opinion of elves,” he says. “Besides, your hair is fine, if a little tousled from sleep. It’s a lovely brown and not what I would call at all offensive.”

For a moment he smooths down the dwarf’s hair, his fingers gently tugging on the wild locks before he withdraws in order to press a fresh cup of tea into Kíli’s hands.

“Dwarves are a secretive race,” Kíli says, because he wants to share with Bilbo and not just because he feels like he owes him. “And many wouldn’t tell you anything but you are travelling with us, and it seems only fair that we—I—tell you something.”

He would be in trouble if the others knew and Bilbo seemed to realize the same. “Kíli, I don’t want you to get yourself in trouble on my account.”

It’s Kíli’s turn to laugh and he rocks back. “Oh, _Mr. Boggins_ ,” he begins teasingly. “I’ve been getting myself in and out of trouble for a very long time. Have no fear.”

They spend the next half hour sipping on tea as Kíli tells Bilbo about the importance of braids and what beads mean. “The beads Fíli has on his moustache, those are from me. I gave him to them when he came of age. Really, they’re not the greatest of craftsmanship but he refuses to take any others. He says they mean too much to him. Beads are given on special occasions; when a dwarf comes of age, or after our first battle, or during courtship.”

Bilbo nods thoughtfully. “So the braids signify the bonds, and the beads to commemorate significant events in one’s life?” he asks, and Kíli smiles with approval.

“Do you mind if I ask why you—”

He is interrupted by another voice. “There you two are.”

Fili is walking towards them and Bilbo bites back his question and busies himself replacing their cups on the now empty tray. “Breakfast is ready,” the blonde tells them. “Though it will likely be nuts and berries, as if we are some woodland creatures for these elves to woo.”

Bilbo chuckles. “Maybe they will yet surprise you, Master Fíli.”

“You’ll forgive me if I keep my doubts,” he retorts but he smiles all the same.

With the tray in hand Bilbo stands. “I’m sure you’ll want to get dressed before breakfast,” he says to Kíli, “I’ll try to save you something from Bombur.”

Kíli grins and nods while Fíli watches the exchange with a careful eye. “We’ll be along shortly, you won’t have to hold him off for long,” the older Durin assures him. They watch the hobbit walk away before Fíli turns to his younger brother. “You know if anyone found out you were telling him of our ways there would be hell to pay, right?”

He understands, as well as someone who has never shared the ridicule his younger brother has been forced to endure, can. He knows Kíli has struggled his entire life to find his place and this will not help him if it comes to light. “He is not one of us, Kíli.”

“ _I’m_ not really one of us,” Kíli retorts. “Not really.”

Fíli’s face grows serious and he grabs his brother by the shirt. “Don’t say that. You are one of us! You have always been one of us!”

Kíli squeezes his brother’s hand. “Will you tell uncle?” he asks and gets a shove for it.

“Of course not! I don’t have an issue with it. I like Bilbo, you know I do. Just don’t let the others find out,” he warns and then pulls Kíli into a hug that is more like a headlock than anything else. “Now come-on. Bilbo won’t be able to hold Bombur off for long.”

Neither of them notices the hobbit slip from the shadows and trot away.


	3. What We Think We Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo continues to learn things about the young dwarf prince, if only through observation. At the same time he manages to perplex Kíli even more. Also, Fíli is a good older brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay (again!). I've been moving and traveling and this chapter fought me tooth and nail. I'm still not entirely happy with it but I think I'll only make it worse if I continue fighting with it. I would make another promise that I'll try to have the next update sooner but as soon as I do that it will take me longer. So I guess I'll just leave you with the promise that I have not forgotten this project and I will finish it. Have no fear!
> 
> QUESTION: Does the jumping between Bilbo and Kíli make sense? Do I need to label it better for you all? I want to include them both, but I don't want you guys to feel like it's too choppy or too hard to follow. Let me know.

It’s funny how everything can change in an instant; how hearing a conversation you were never meant to be privy to could change your entire perspective in the blink of an eye.

Kíli’s desire to spend time with Bilbo had seemed odd only in the sense that none of the others seemed to harbor any interest in that same activity. It wasn’t that they were rude. No, it was more to the fact that if given half the chance they were more content to spend time with others of their own kind. Bilbo doesn’t mind, not really. He understands. _It’s much the same as we hobbits, in fact_ , he has told himself on many nights when he found himself sitting beside the fire on his own.

But the youngest dwarf had seemed to always have a kind word for him, even if it was in passing. He’d always seemed to listen attentively when Bilbo spoke.

It didn’t make so much sense until now.

“ _I’m_ not really one of us,” Kíli had told his brother, and Bilbo had heard the pain beneath his words, that bone deep ache that was hard to shake off. “Not really.”

Fíli had grabbed his brother immediately, protectiveness evident in every line of his body. “Don’t say that. You are one of us! You have always been one of us!”

It wasn’t one grand epiphany. The clouds didn’t roll back and all the pieces suddenly aligned in a bright shining moment but Bilbo thought he understood, or at least related to the young dwarf better now. It was a hard burden to bear when you didn’t fit in among the people you were born to. When you felt like a stranger among your own kind. Bilbo supposes now that he is lucky to have had two parents who embraced his differences, and at least one of which who had shared them herself.

And Bilbo shared many common loves with his kin. He loved to work the earth, to eat and drink. He took comfort in the smial beneath the hill, the home his father had built for his mother, the place he had grown up. Even in his differences he found common ground. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

But Kíli was not like him. Kíli, whose smile seemed to hold all of the youth and eagerness his fellow dwarves kept in check, if they shared it at all. And now Bilbo understood him at least a little better.

It is easy to forget that the two brothers are older than him; the long lives of their people mean their days of youth stretch the decades that would see a hobbit well past his majority. But youth did not come without its prices, not even for the young princes. The intricacies of politics and a royal line are things that Bilbo has little knowledge in, and for that he is quite glad. There are expectations and titles to be kept and appearances to maintain. It is a difficult life, and youth does not help their cause.

To feel out of place among your own kind, on an equal ground, is one thing. To have all eyes focused on every move you make is infinitely more difficult. People critique your every decision; they analyze your every word. When you already doubt yourself, when you worry you’re wrong in every way that matters it makes you feel like less of a person.

No one should have to live like that.

He manages to fend off Bombur, with Bofur’s assistance, long enough for the brothers to arrive, and if Kíli has pulled his hair back into his clasp and has made some attempt to smooth it down he pretends not to notice.

But he does all the same.

 

And Bilbo begins to notice other things he hadn't really noticed before. To the rest of the company, with the exclusion of his brother and Ori, Kíli is treated as little more than a child. The energy that would see him the favorite of many fauntlings in the Shire is not so well received among his kin. It has its uses surely; he is sent out hunting and he stands guard during the deep hours of the night when his keen eyesight will best aid their watch. But now Bilbo sees the thorns. He sees the little barbs that make Kíli flinch.

“At least you’re proficient with that elvish twig of yours!” someone calls when Kíli brings down two grouse, making the others laugh. They mean it in jest, but Bilbo sees how Kíli’s jaw clenches, how he casts his gaze down making up an excuse that he has to find and dress the birds.

 “When we were young Kíli broke his collar bone falling out of a tree,” Fíli says quietly, appearing out of nowhere to fall in step with Bilbo. They slow in order to put some distance between themselves and the rest. “He picked up a bow because while he was weaker on that side it was still a weapon he could use, and he excelled at it. However, there are not many dwarven archers and he has always faced some…adversity for using it.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Bilbo asks curiously. He is thankful for the insight but Fíli has never volunteered any insight into his brother before.

“I tell you this because my brother seems to trust you, and he is a good judge of character no matter what others might say. And also because you are kind to him, and I appreciate that.”

Bilbo offers the golden-haired brother a smile. “And why shouldn’t I be kind to him? Or care what weapon he chooses. He is kind, and warm. Sometimes he speaks without thinking, but we are guilty of that.”

“Your qualities, and those your people value, are rare among our kind and while I do not deny we may benefit from them greatly it means we are not as accustomed to them as we perhaps should be. Our traditions are strong, carved from the same stone our ancestors were, and are oftentimes just as inflexible.” He looks down at the hobbit and must see some objection there. “It isn’t right,” he concedes before Bilbo can voice any protest. “But that’s how it is.”

After hearing Fíli’s warning to his brother it is something of a surprise to have him speak so openly about his people. Surely he risks just as much as his brother if the others heard. “I know you both risk the ire of your uncle, and the others, if they knew you were telling me these things.”

Fíli grins. “Fear not, we have been escaping the wrath of our elders since we were very young.”

Bilbo chuckles, “Your brother said the same thing.”

“Well you know what they say about great minds,” Fíli replied cheekily causing Bilbo to snort. “Just don’t tell him I said that. It would go straight to his head.”

Bilbo’s reply is cut short by Kíli’s return, his normal smile back in place as he slings the birds over one shoulder and joins them at the end of the line.

“What are you talking about?”

Fíli winks at Bilbo and favors his brother with a grin that says he’s not going to tell him the truth.

“Your timing.”

 

 

Once they have time to stop, once they have time to breathe again, Kíli thinks he will have nightmares about the ground cracking open beneath his feet. He will flinch when it yawns wide, and he will reach for his brother but Fíli will always be just out of reach. And as he stretches, as he wills his fingers to lengthen just an inch so he can grab his brother the ground will open up and swallow them whole.

But they don’t have time to stop, not now, because the ground has not stopped falling out from beneath them. At least this time they are together even if it seems what time they have will soon be cut short. Kíli had never pictured his own death though he supposes now that it had always been their looming in the shadows, closer than he’d like. Still he never thought it would be like this. Somehow he always pictured himself dying beneath a wide, open sky. He was a dwarf but he never imagined himself dying beneath the mountains.

And it seems that fate, at least this day, agrees with him. Thorin will grumble at the fact that the wizard has saved them but Kíli is grateful. He has saved the company again. Saved his brother. Saved—

“Where’s Bilbo?” the wizard demands. “Where’s our hobbit?!”

There is a mad scramble, a recounting of heads but no hobbit materializes and shoulders slump when they realize they have escaped the goblin’s tunnels one member short.

“I think I saw him slip away when they first collared us,” Nori admits and Gandalf rounds on him demanding to know what he saw, what happened.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Thorin interrupts, face snarling in the fading light. “He saw his chance and he took it! He has thought of nothing but his soft bed and his warm hearth since he first left home! That _burglar_ is long gone!” He spits out the word burglar like it is a curse, like he has brought nothing but trouble to them. A burden. A dead weight.

Kíli looks at his brother, his eyes holding all the questions he can’t voice. Could it be true? Could he have misjudged Bilbo so completely? He knew the hobbit was ill-suited for their adventure, but he’d come along anyway and he’d risen to the challenges so far. Surely that had to count for something. Surely he wouldn’t come so far just to turn back now.

“No. He’s not.”

Kíli startles and whips around to find a dirty, slightly bloodied Bilbo panting at the edge of their group. He’s alive and he’s here. He grips Balin’s shoulder in greeting and Gandalf smiles broadly, but Thorin does not.

“Why did you come back?” Thorin asks, his voice rough as he steps towards the hobbit.

“Surely, it doesn’t matter except that he’s here,” Gandalf protests.

“It matters!”

“Look I know you doubt me,” Bilbo says and he’s staring straight at Thorin who seems as surprised as everyone else by his sudden bravery. “I know you always have. And you’re right. I miss my arm chair. I miss my books and my garden. You see, that’s where I belong. That’s home. And that’s why I came back, because you don’t have one, a home. It was taken from you.” He looks around, his eyes meeting Kíli’s for the briefest of moments, and he swears they soften slightly, before he looks back at Thorin. “But I will help you take it back if I can.”

It’s that simple. With just a few words Bilbo Baggins, master of Bag End, humbles them.

He could have stayed in his warm, hobbit hole and his conscience would never have woken him during a long night to fill him with heavy regret.  He doesn’t owe them allegiance and they do not share a bond of kinship. Instead he has traipsed halfway across Middle Earth to help them, and for what? Not for the gold, Kíli would bet on that. Not because he has any desire to be a hero. Kíli realizes that despite everything, despite the reason that Bilbo gives for coming back, no one knows why he came in the first place.

It is a mystery, and it makes Kíli more determined than ever to discover the truth.

But that truth will have to come later because the air is punctuated with all-too familiar howls. Wargs. And where wargs come, orcs follow.

In all of the times he had imagined this journey he hadn’t pictured it like this. It wasn’t that he didn’t expect it to be hard, or the nights to be cold, or that they wouldn’t face danger, he just hadn’t expected their lives to be hanging by a thread every time he turned around. Fear never seemed so real before this.

What scares him is the gasp of horror he hears Thorin utter at the sight of the pale orc. His blood runs cold when his uncle descends from their collapsing tree to face his foe head on, even though in his heart he knows there is no other option. He grew up on tales of Azanulbizar, and he never doubted his uncle’s belief that the fiend had died from his wounds in the depths of the mountains. That he lived, that he still fought to end their line was a deafening blow. It changes everything they think they know.

Kíli knows that Thorin must face him, but it doesn’t have to be now.

Later Kíli will wonder at the fact that Bilbo rushes to his uncle’s defense even though Thorin has been nothing but cold towards him. For what reason would he place himself between the pale orc and his uncle? There was no debt owed, and surely Bilbo wouldn’t have expected to win that fight—so then why?

For dwarves facing off against an enemy was a badge of honor. It showed courage and bravery by staring death in the face. If you fell it was as a dwarf should, with honor in battle. But hobbits were not made for battle, stealthy and silent as they might be. Still that does not stop Bilbo’s charge—it does not sway his courage.

Bilbo earns the rest of the company’s favor after that.

“You are the reason our uncle lives.”

“Don’t give me credit where none is due,” Bilbo says, but there is no energy in his voice, no fight. “If you want to thank someone thank Gandalf, or the eagles, or yourselves.”

It’s Fíli that sits beside him. “I don’t think it’s undue credit, Master Baggins. Whatever the motivation the fact remains that were it not for you our uncle would be dead now. There’s no denying that.”

“I’m not sure I agree, but I don’t have the energy to argue with you… either of you,” he says as he looks up at Kíli who is standing at his other shoulder. “Is it time to go?”

“Oin is still tending to uncle’s wounds. We have a little time.”

Kíli sits opposite of his brother on Bilbo’s other side and sets his arm around the smaller man’s shoulders. “You can rest your eyes, Bilbo. We’ll wake you when we’re ready to go.”

“You don’t have to—to—a” But his eyes are already closing and his argument dies on his lips as his head falls against Kíli’s shoulder.

The hobbit seems so small here tucked against his side and for a moment Kíli is worried that something is wrong with him but somehow Fíli knows just what to say. “The first time I killed someone, the first time I saw a real battle, it was all adrenaline and nerves and a rush of blood. Don’t worry. This is normal. He wasn’t made for fighting, and even if he were he wasn’t ready to face it regardless. The adrenaline has died down and his body is just trying to compensate. He’ll be alright.”

Kíli leans towards his brother, his body curling around the body beside him. “Why would he do that, Fí? Why would he rush to uncle’s defense after everything he’s been through? These hobbits, they’re peaceful folk. Like you said, they’re not made for fighting.”

Fíli looks down at the sleeping hobbit. “Fighting weeds in their gardens maybe.” He looks up at Kíli and shrugs. “I don’t know. Bravery? Honor? He has both those things. But his true motivations…well I just don’t know.”

They sit there in silence before Fíli speaks again. “Why did _you_ come?”

Kíli startles and stares at his brother in bewilderment. “You know why! To help Uncle reclaim our home. To win back Erebor.”

“Is that the real reason, or is it what you tell yourself because it’s what’s expected of you—what is expected of an heir of Durin?”

Fíli doesn’t need an answer. He reaches over and ruffles his brother’s hair. “Maybe Master Baggins’ reasons aren’t such a mystery?” he suggests before he stands.

Kíli doesn’t have time to muse on his brother’s words because Thorin is calling for them to move out and he’s shaking Bilbo awake. He’s offered a bleary smile before the hobbit joins the rest of the company and their journey continues ever onward.

In the distance Erebor looms.


	4. Whispers and Smiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kíli finds he likes making Bilbo smile, and it makes hard memories a bit easier to bear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter (after a long wait) but I wanted to give you guys something before I left for a long weekend. I'm again very sorry for how long this takes to update. My muse comes and goes.

The whispers started early.

Whenever his back was turned, whenever he was lost in a throng of people he heard them. He would whirl around, eyes searching for the owner of the voice but he never caught them. Anonymity made them bold. It evoked their cruelty when they were sure they would never be found out.

“Maybe he will look more like a dwarf when his beard sprouts…if it ever does.”

“If he loves the tree shaggers enough to pick up their weapons perhaps he should go live with them.”

“Surely _that_ is no heir of Durin.”

The barbs lodged under his skin, burrowing ever deeper, hurting him when he didn’t expect it. They tore at him when he was still, when a moment was left open and his mind wandered. He learned to cover up the evidence beneath an armor of chatter and boundless energy. He hid the winces behind bright smiles.

But like any child sometimes the hurt ran too deep and he couldn’t hide it away. It overflowed and spilled out and made him want to hide away where no one could see him because empty spaces couldn’t judge a dwarf who didn’t fit in.

_He had gone missing one day on a break from Balin’s lessons. When he didn’t return a frantic Fíli ran home to tell his mother who sent word to the forge.  While Dís and Fíli waited at their home Thorin and Dwalin set out to find the youngster, and it was his uncle that found him hours later with his ear pressed to the smooth stone, eyes closed as he listened. His tears had long since dried but they had traced tracks down his cheeks that he hadn’t thought to wipe away._

_“Kíli, what are you doing? Is this where you’ve been? You’ve had us all worried sick!” his uncle scolded._

_“Shhhh!”_

_“Kíli.” Thorin’s voice held all the warning he usually needed to use with his nephews but this time he was completely ignored. He bent to grab the boy’s arm. “Kíli!”_

_“Stop, be quiet! I’m listening!”_

_His youngest nephew was rarely quiet, and rarely stopped long enough to do anything least of all listen. This was unusual and Thorin knew it. With a sigh and a creak in his joints that he liked to pretend wasn’t there he stretched out alongside Kíli and pressed his own ear to the ground._

_He waited._

_And heard nothing._

_“Kíli, what are we listening for?” he asked, and he wasn’t prepared for the pitiful sniffle his nephew gave. The boy was just barely thirty, still very much a youngster, and he screwed his eyes shut as tears tried to escape again._

_Thorin knew what the others said. He knew that Kíli was the brunt of many unkind rumors and words. While he was fiercely protective of his nephews, he could only defend them against those who dared speak or act in his presence and they had long since learned never to speak ill of Kíli in front of him. They were not stupid enough to invoke the wrath of Thorin Oakenshield. Especially not when it came to his family._

_He reached out and swiped at the tears with his thumb. “Lad, what are we listening for?” he repeated._

_“Singing.”_

_“Singing?”_

_Kíli nods, cheek scraping against the stone. “They others say a real dwarf can hear the stone singing,” he said softly. “I need to hear it singing.”_

_His voice was so wistful, so full of longing that Thorin felt his heart clench. He sat up and pulled his nephew into a hug. “Kíli, it’s not something you’ll hear with your face pressed against the stone. It’s more like a feeling, a connection to the mountains and the stone. You’ll feel it in your bones, in your heart. It’s something that will shift within your very core. It will be a feeling you won’t doubt, and you won’t forget. Do you understand?”_

_Kíli had regarded his uncle with solemn eyes. “I understand.”_

_Thorin wouldn’t realize until many long years later that understanding didn’t offer Kíli the comfort or assurances he had thought it did._

As he grew older he saw the effort those closest to him put forth to try to empathize, but it wasn’t something they could understand, it wasn’t something they could feel from the outside looking in. As much as they might try, and as much as he might love them for it, they would never know what it was like to be him. They would never carry the weight of a stigma and the harsh reactions it brought with it.

Fíli was a fierce protector, always ready to back his brother up with words or action. He was calm, a cool head under pressure, and loyal without a doubt. He was also respected, and while he was just a prince to a king with no kingdom he possessed an air of royalty few questioned. In that respect he took after their mother. Dís was well loved and often it was under her guidance that rifts between their people did not grow larger. People respected her, admired her. She was a princess in every meaning of the word and the people never doubted it. They never doubted she had been carved from the same stone as Durin himself.

But not Kíli. He took after his father, and his mother would tell him that was no ill thing. He barely remembered him, for all that he had died when he was still very young, but his mother had bit back her grief to tell him about the man he so closely resembled when the world rested heavy on his young shoulders.

"You share the same spirit, the same love of life," she had told him once, when he had returned from playing sporting a bloody nose and tears in his eyes when the others told him he was too scrawny to be anything other than the spawn of an elf. "And you have his smile. It's a beautiful smile, my little bird."

He had buried his face against her shoulder and she told him the story of how they'd met, how he had won her over with his laugh and his honor.

"He was simple only in that he was not troubled by the burdens of ruling. He could work the stone like no one I had ever seen and he loved you boys more than anything."

But love had not saved him in the end. It hadn't prevented him from going off to war. And even though no one ever said it Kíli knew that his father had never been a strong fighter. He had been raised in the mines. He could wield a pickax with deadly effect but pickaxes were no match for the swords, maces, and bows the enemy used. He had not returned from Azanulbizar.

His family was a strong foundation, but they did not understand him. He had never expected to meet someone who might.

Until he'd met Bilbo.

It wasn't as if he knew the hobbit's life story. In fact, he knew very little about him. Bilbo had told him about hobbits in general and had offered some small insight into his parents, but beyond that his past was a mystery. Still, he seemed to be something of a kindred spirit.

"Are you alright, Master Baggins?"

It is midday and the carrock still seems to loom above them; it had taken a lot longer to descend then they had expected, even though they had been walking for hours now. Gandalf agrees with Balin that a short rest won’t hurt anything and an assurance to Thorin that they will still make it to his friend’s home before sundown is all it takes for him to call a stop to their march.

The hobbit looks up at him, exhaustion coloring the skin below his eyes purple. "Back to Master Baggins, are we?"

Kíli drops down next to him. "Bilbo."

"I'm alright. And how are you? Were you injured at all?"

Kíli shakes his head. "Nothing but a few scrapes."

He's rewarded with a laugh. "You're like a cat. Always landing on your feet then."

"A cat?" Kíli scoffs, but there's a grin on his face. "I am far more noble than a cat!"

Bilbo regards him with mock severity. "If you think a cat is anything but noble you haven't lived with one," he replies. "They think they rule the household and everyone and everything, and they live to be pleased. My father had this scrap of a cat that loved only him. Orange as flames and with a temper to put an ogre to shame. He was a monster, but I never told my father that. He loved the furry beast. They are smarter; smarter than people give them credit for and they are self-sufficient. There is more to them than meets the eye." He murmurs the last part so softly Kíli almost doesn’t hear him. Bilbo’s fingers drum against his leg as he falls into silence for a long moment before he looks up at him. "But they always seem to escape trouble with ease..." Bilbo finds a scratch on Kíli's palm and grips the dwarf's wrist to look at it. When he seems to assure himself it's nothing to worry about he smiles up at Kíli. "As do you."

The young dwarf is silent for a long moment as he contemplates the hobbit’s words. Was Bilbo just describing a cat? Or was he describing what he’d seen in him? He opens his mouth to ask and then shuts it again and he knows Bilbo sees him, but he doesn’t ask.

“Alright then, if I’m a cat what are you?” he asks instead.

“Well I suppose if you ask anyone that’s ever known me they’d say I’m a mouse,” Bilbo concedes. “They would say I’m timid and mild-mannered; that I hide away in my home and do only what everyone expects—or at least I did up until now.”

“And what do you say?”

Bilbo wrings his hands. “Well I do live in a hole in the ground,” he finally concedes and he smiles up at him.

Kíli knows a diversion when he sees one.  “It was a very nice hole in the ground,” he replies, and he knows it’s the right answer when Bilbo smiles.

He likes making Bilbo smile.


	5. Fairies and Feelings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo reflects on his childhood and his feelings for a certain brown-eyed dwarrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you think I had forgotten you? I haven't! This has just continued to expand and I have many more chapters currently in progress for this. Hopefully you enjoy! :)

“It feels good to just _sit down_ ,” Bilbo says to no one but himself.

He’s sitting in Beorn’s massive expanse of a garden with his pipe as the bees buzz by on their way from flower to flower. In the pasture the ponies are grazing peacefully and for the first time in a very long while Bilbo feels completely safe. He feels content.

Well, _almost_ content.

He casts a look around before heaving out a sigh; He is still, blessedly, alone. It isn’t that he doesn’t enjoy the company of the others; it’s not that at all. In fact, if anything they’ve all been much warmer since their descent from the carrock—and what a descent that had been. He’s been nearly asleep and had tripped over his own feet more times than he cared to admit. But always there had been a hand to steady him or catch his elbow before he could tumble away. Usually it was Dwalin, the stern warrior giving him a short nod and the smallest of smiles when Bilbo thanked him yet again.

It had been Dwalin’s hand at his elbow but Bilbo realized with some degree of discomfort that he wished it was Kíli’s.

Over the course of their journey so far he’d found an unlikely affection growing for the young dwarf. It wasn’t just wanton infatuation. Somehow, somewhere along the way he’d come to care for Kíli. He wanted him to be happy, to have his home back, to feel loved.

 _But he’s a dwarf, you silly hobbit, and a prince._ Bilbo scolds himself. _He’ll have responsibilities once the mountain is theirs again. Responsibilities that will not include dalliances with simple hobbits from the Shire._

Not that he ever much fit to the Shire standard. Or that he’d ever been simple. He had too much of his mother’s wildness. Too much Took blood for a respectable Baggins. It was bound to happen; they’d all said it for as long as he could remember.

 “It is better this way,” Bilbo tells himself with a nod. “There are far too many reasons why it should not be, rather than why it should.”

_The round, green door is open and he can hear voices as he dashes up the steps._

_The day had carried him down past Bywater into the woods near Tookborough in search of wood elves and fairies. His golden curls were tousled and laced with twigs and leaves from where he'd fallen asleep in the sunlight._

_His parents were used to him returning as the sun sank behind the trees with scuffed knees and torn trousers. He was never met with a scolding, only with a warm smile and an even warmer meal. His mother would usher him in and his father would sit with him, smiling patiently as his young son told him about his day._

_But this time it was different. He returned to Bag End but it wasn't just his parents that were there. They were entertaining guests and those guests did not share his parent’s indulgence for fairy tales and adventurous young hobbits._

_He pauses in the door way leaning into the round frame as he listens. It’s impolite to eavesdrop, he knows this, but he can’t help it. He hadn’t known they were expecting company._

_“Out past teatime?” There was a disapproving sniff and Bilbo recognizes his grandmother’s voice. “Seriously Bella, you must rein him in. How will be become a proper Baggins if you don’t teach him?”_

_“He is a Took too,” Belladonna replies, her voice calm and firm. “And a child besides. They should be allowed to play, to chase after fireflies and daydream. He should be home any time.”_

_When he bounces in the door he is met with a look of disdain from his cousin, Lobelia Sackville, and a tut-tut from his grandmother._

_"Really Bella, don't you think your son is old enough to not be entertaining such fantasies? He should be here at home, not off chasing fantasies. At this rate he’ll never be a proper hobbit." She turns to her grandson and even though her face is kind her words cut him more than anyone will know. “Don’t you want to be a proper hobbit?”_

_He looks between his mother and the others, but even though she doesn't hesitate to leap to her young son's defense he feels the weight of those words. They think he isn’t a proper hobbit. They don't understand. They don't see the magic of the world. They don't wonder what lies beyond the borders of their peaceful home._

_But he does. And they look down on him for it._

_His mother finds him in his room that evening after she manages to politely shoo their guests out the front door and untangles her son from a cocoon of quilts._

_"Dry your eyes, my love," she murmurs as he turns his face into her shoulder and she gathers him onto her lap. She smells of clover and freshly baked scones and her fingers are warm on his face as she smooths away the tears from his cheeks. "It doesn't matter whether you're a proper hobbit or not. Not to me."_

_She stands him up on his feet and bends to press a kiss to his forehead. "Come now, I have some biscuits and honey fresh for you. You must be hungry and I want to hear about your day." His father has gone down to the market to buy some items for supper and so Bilbo pulls himself up into the chair at the head of the table while his mother goes back to the soup she has on the stove. The hurt is still fresh and he still doesn't feel like doing much more than slathering the biscuits his mother sets in front of him in honey, but she fixes him with such a sweet smile and hopeful look that he relents and offers her a crooked grin. "Tell me where you went today, sweetling."_

_So he does._

_He tells her about the warren of rabbits that have taken up residence in a copse near Bywater, how they have welcomed new kits into their family. He describes the trail he found winding through the reeds and rocks on the bank of the creek and wonders aloud if it was left there by fairies._

_He stops and he’s quiet for so long that Belladonna turns around, her hands twisting at the hand towel near the hearth. He finally sighs and looks up sheepishly. "It was probably left by otters, right mama?" he says after a long pause. "Not fairies."_

_“I’m sure it was fairies, Bilbo,” she says. And she touches his cheek, gently turning his chin up so their eyes meet. “Don’t let them take away the things you believe in.”_

_She’s so earnest that he gives her a smile and bobs his head._

_“It’s fairies,” he says but even to his own ears he doesn’t sound quite so convinced anymore._

After that his trips to the woods grew fewer and further between. He spent more time practicing his letters and learning to cook. He spent hours in front of the kitchen window, or the small round in his father’s study that would later become his study, his eyes travelling to the places his feet no longer carried him. But he pushed aside the part of him that missed it; he molded himself into the kind of person the other hobbits found proper. He did even though he knew it wouldn’t work, not completely.

But he’d done it. He’d set aside the person he was to be the person everyone else thought he should be. He became more like his father and less like his mother, even though he adored and admired her spirit as much as his father did. He learned to keep house and tend his garden. He’d become the master of Bag End upon the death of his parents and had even managed to grow some prize-winning tomatoes. He was by most accounts—though not all—a respectable hobbit.

And by the time Gandalf had shown up on his doorstep he’d been so close to certain that he should have been just that from the beginning. A normal hobbit, content to remain in the Shire and keep up his hearth and home. It’s what hobbits were meant to do. Looking back it wasn’t so hard to see just how easily that façade had come tumbling down at the insistence of a meddling wizard and thirteen boisterous dwarves. Trouble, that’s what they brought; at least that’s what he told himself at first. He supposes he’s still not sure, they’ve encountered an awful lot of trolls, goblins, orcs, and wargs so far, but it hasn’t been quite so bad as he’d imagined.

But he’d found companionship, and adventure, and a piece of himself that he hadn’t acknowledged for many long years.

And he’d found Kíli.

A hummingbird zips by then returns, hovering above him. Its bright red breast makes it looks like a ruby suspended in midair. It reminds him of the roses in his mother’s garden, and his tomatoes, and the way Kíli blushes when he’s embarrassed.

The two watch each other curiously.

“I used to believe you were fairies, you know,” he murmurs to the creature as it hums over his head. “And I don’t know now why I ever let them convince me you weren’t.”

 

 

 

When the lengthening shadows chase him indoors again he finds Kíli sitting near his bedroll, legs spread out looking intently at the fabric in his hands. Upon closer inspection Bilbo finds it’s one of the dwarrow’s shirts and he’s attempting to mend it.

Attempting and failing.

“What are you doing?” Bilbo asks in an attempt to draw Kíli’s attention away from stabbing himself with a needle.

Kíli looks up at him like he’s slow. “Sewing.”

Bilbo can’t help but roll his eyes. “That is not sewing, Kíli. That is stabbing yourself with a needle while holding a torn shirt.”

Kíli’s mouth drops open and he looks between Bilbo and his hands several times before his shoulders slump and he looks up at the hobbit sheepishly. “Alright, I suppose that’s accurate.”

His admission is met with a laugh and Bilbo sits down beside him. He holds out his hands, “Give it here.”

“I can—I—can’t do this,” Kíli admits with a sigh and hands over the shirt.

Bilbo bumps their shoulders together and begins to thread the needle through the fabric with the ease of long practice. “It’s an acquired skill. Don’t be too hard on yourself. If I were to pick up a blade and try to sharpen it you can believe I had even less luck than you had with these.”

"I suppose that's true," Kíli admits dejectedly and Bilbo breaks from sewing to smile at him. “It just seems like such a simple thing. Like something I should know how to do.”

"You should cut yourself some slack," Bilbo tells him. "It's not the end of the world that you haven't learned to sew and this way I can do something for you."

"But there are many things you can do for me that don't involve mending my clothes!" Kíli exclaims.

"Is that so?" He leers at Kíli teasingly before he can stop himself and as soon as he realizes what he's done he flushes bright red and drops his gaze back to the task at hand. "What I mean to say rather is that I don't mind mending your clothes. Not in the slightest."

They both sit there in silence except for the crackle of the fire nearby and the laughter of some dwarves who had broken into one of Beorn's kegs.

"Do you have others?"

"You've finished already?!" Kíli inspects the neatly stitched shirt and then grins at Bilbo. "Are you sure?"

The hobbit makes a grabbing gesture with his hand. "Give them here. We can't have you reclaim Erebor in torn trousers after all."

A small pile of clothing materializes between them and the hobbit picks up a pair of trousers. "Do you really think we'll succeed?" The question is asked so softly Bilbo almost misses it.

Did he think they'd succeed? When they'd first left Bag End he'd thought a dragon would be the worst thing they'd have to contend with, and he'd even been skeptical then. Now he knew there were more dangers along the road between them, and the journey was even more perilous than he'd imagined. But he'd also seen firsthand just how sturdy these dwarves were, how stout of heart. It would not be easy but he had faith.

"I should think so, Kíli. In the end we’ll give it our very best, and that's all we can do." That's all anyone could do. "If you do your best... If we all do our best then no one can ask for more. Well at least they shouldn't."

He gives the dwarf a smile and focuses on sewing up a rather large hole in the trousers he'd picked out of the pile. "Now how did you manage this?!"

"Would you believe me if I said the eagles did it?"

Bilbo can't help the laughter that spills out him and Kíli deadpans. "So that's a no?"

"You're ridiculous."

Kíli grins. "And?"

"And obnoxious," Bilbo retorts but he's smiling.

"And?" Kíli's voice is softer now, the look on his face just a touch more intense than it had been moments before.

Bilbo swallows thickly before answering, willing his voice not to waiver. "And charming."

Bilbo knows he's on thin ice. He should curb his tongue before it leads him into trouble. But Kíli seems to take it all in stride as he leans closer his eyes darker than Bilbo can ever remember seeing them. "And?"

"And--"

"Come on, you two. Dinner!" Bofur calls and winks as the two jump apart.

Bilbo blushes and Kíli jumps to his feet holding out a hand to the other man to help him up. "Wouldn't want to miss dinner!" He says and his usual smiling demeanor is firmly back in place.

"No," Bilbo shakes his head. "We wouldn't."

They enjoy dinner and Thorin announces they will stay another day before setting out for Mirkwood. It is a welcome piece of news.

He slips away from the table before the others and sits on his bedroll, listening to the dwarves laugh around the table as he dips his needle in and out of the cloth in his hands. He hums under his breath, the same songs his mother used to sing, as he works.

It’s late when he stirs from sleep, woken by a warm body tucking in next to him. There are dwarves snoring and he finds he’s fallen asleep on top of the clothes he had mended. He thinks he hears the ghost of a chuckle and imagines warm fingers brushing against his forehead.

“And?” The word is whispered in his ear and even in those hazy moments when his mind hasn’t decided if he’s awake or sleeping he is taken back to his conversation with Kíli earlier in the evening.

“And handsome,” he murmurs, eyes closed, still dreaming.

There’s the sharp intake of breath before he Kíli’s voice is soft in his ear. “Truly, you think so?”

His hazel eyes blink open to meet dark ones even in the low light left from a dying fire. “Of course. I’d have to be blind not to.”

“But I do not look like the other dwarves,” Kíli whispers like it is some terrible secret.

Bilbo’s eyes are heavy, sleep is pulling at him still but he smiles. “No, you look like Kíli. And I like Kíli. Very much.”

As sleep closes over him a pair of lips close over his and he thinks this is a very good dream.

A wonderful dream.


	6. Secrets I'll Never Tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A budding relationship, some secrets, and basically just a filler chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have every right to hate me for how long I've made you wait for this, but as usual I promise I have NOT forgotten about it or you. I have no good excuses for the delay aside from life. There are many chapters in the works for this, and if you have anything you'd like to see feel free to message me and I'll see if I can incorporate it. 
> 
> This is just a filler chapter really, there's not much a plot advancement here.... but next chapter that will change.
> 
> Thanks again for reading!!!

Fíli knows there are certain things his brother hasn’t told him, and certain things he never will. Kíli won’t tell him that he was terrified when they were wrenched apart by stone giants, that he thought his heart wouldn’t stop pounding even after he was assured that his brother hadn’t been killed when the cliff faces slammed together with a sickening grind of solid rock. He won’t tell Fíli that in those split seconds he had wondered how he might go on without him because it seemed like an impossible task. His brother was his best friend, his closest confidant. He can’t comprehend a world where his brother doesn’t exist. He doesn’t say a word but Fíli knows because he had felt the exact same thing.

Maybe he doesn’t tell him because in his head it sounds soft and they’ve been raised believing they should be made of stone. Fíli hopes Kíli knows that he would never judge him for admitting that. He would never hold it against him for feeling such things that others might label a weakness. Still, part of him hopes it is because he’s certain Fíli already knows. Some things you don't have to speak out loud. Some words you never have to voice. Kíli may keep some things from him, but he tells him a great many things too. They have shared secrets they would never whisper to another. There is trust between them, and respect, and love. They are nothing if not loyal to each other.

But Fíli still knows his brother hides things from him, or does his best to.

He won’t tell Fíli how he kissed Bilbo Baggins when he thought everyone else was sleeping and the fire had burned low in the skin changer’s hearth. When Fíli sat propped against a wall, pipe in hand, his head bent low as exhaustion pulled at him. Even with sleep vying for his attention the older of the two brothers hadn’t missed the hobbit’s smile when Kíli bent over him, even as his eyes had been falling swiftly closed back into slumber, and Kíli won’t tell him what the hobbit whispered to him in the darkness. But he won’t forget the tender smile on Kíli’s face, the look of genuine affection.

“You are a wonder, Bilbo Baggins,” Kíli had murmured to the sleeping hobbit, just loud enough for Fíli to hear.

However their burglar had managed to get past his brother’s walls of false cheer certainly was nothing short of extraordinary.

He is a wonder indeed.

The next morning he wakes to see Kíli curled around the spot that Bilbo had occupied the night before. Kíli will mourn the loss when he wakes but perhaps it is best this way. What Fíli has observed might not yet be obvious to the rest of their company, and he’s not sure what their uncle will think of the relationship. He doesn’t doubt Thorin’s desire to see Kíli happy, but there have always been other expectations to uphold. Regardless of that, to Fíli his brother’s happiness is paramount, the cost unimportant. He will support him always.

After breakfast and a soak he finds his brother sitting on Beorn’s porch, dark eyes trained on a certain hobbit off in the gardens with Balin and Ori speaking animatedly about something neither can hear. Fíli sees the hobbit pause mid-sentence and a fine blush creeps over his cheeks up to the tip of his ears when he meets Kíli’s gaze.

His younger brother is still grinning when he sits down beside him. “What has you in such a good mood?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer. _Or should I ask who?_ He finishes silently.

Kíli offers no explanation, and Fíli isn’t really surprised. They smoke in silence, both smiling around the stems of their pipes though for different reasons to be sure. When he’s finished Fíli bumps their shoulders together before standing. “Keep your secrets then.”

He watches his brother’s face crease into a smile without speaking a word. There are certain things Kíli doesn’t tell his brother, but sometimes Fíli knows it all the same.

 

 

Kíli waves his brother off as he watches Bilbo laugh with Ori, the sun highlighting the subtle notes of copper in his hair. He holds his tongue when Beorn appears, his booming laugh startling Bilbo as he calls the hobbit “little bunny”. Kíli even remains silent when his uncle stops to exchange words with a suddenly shy hobbit. He wants to be the one laughing with Bilbo, wants to be the one standing next to him when his hazel eyes grow wide with surprise or soft with compassion. But he keeps still until Bilbo is suddenly, and blessedly, alone.

When Bilbo’s attention is finally up for grabs he bounds across the lawn to catch the shorter man’s hand and pulls him away where he knows no one will see them when he bends down to kiss him soundly.

He’d wanted to do this since he’d woken to an empty space beside him. There was nothing he’d wanted more than to curl up together and share sleepy kisses when they thought no one was looking. Instead he’d stretched, mouth yawning wide like a cat as he’d cast his eyes around in search of his hobbit. The hall was empty but the front door had been cracked open and sunlight had been spilling in.

Now he has the opportunity he’d missed this morning, and Bilbo is soft and warm and—not kissing him back. Kíli pulls away. “Is something wrong?”

“You—but I—last night—“

“Such a way with words,” Kíli teases, leaning into to try to sneak another kiss. Bilbo is too occupied with putting his thoughts to words to notice until the soft press of the dwarf’s lips on his interrupt him.

“Last night… I thought it was a dream,” Bilbo says against Kíli’s lips and it makes the dwarf laugh.

“If it was a dream then it was a very good dream. Or maybe a perfect dream,” he amends when he feels Bilbo’s lips press against his or when his hands are no longer empty because the hobbit’s fingers are tangled through his.

There is no fevered rush to claim as much as the other will give. The kisses they share are sweet and gentle. In this moment they have all the time in the world and they take advantage of it. It is the laughter of the others that breaks the moment and they pull back breathless and grinning.

“In all my years I’ve never met anyone quite like you, Bilbo Baggins,” Kíli tells him.

“That’s a good thing, I hope?”

Kíli bends down to kiss the hobbit again, slow and sweet and full of promise. “I would say so.”

There are many things he wants to say, but despite the fact that they’re out of sight they’re far from alone and some things are best left to privacy. And while Bilbo has kissed him back and told him he’s handsome he still can’t help the nagging feeling that seventy-odd years of experience have impressed upon him. It clenches in his gut and leaves him unsettled. He hates that he doubts this, he hates that past the initial thrill of the moment part of him wonders if Bilbo isn’t mistaken but he doesn’t want to take the chance by asking. This seems to perfect to be real but he will enjoy it for as long as he can.

“What are you thinking?”

Bilbo is looking up at him, his fingers squeezing gently where they’re still twined with Kíli’s.

“It’s…nothing,” Kíli finally says. He smiles, pushing back all the uncertainty at war in his chest. “Nothing at all.”

It’s not the usual acceptance that he’s met with and the objection on the hobbit’s face is clear. With his usual tactics not working to distract Kíli tries to wipe away Bilbo’s questions with one more kiss.

 

 

When Kíli is kissing him he can almost forget he sees all the fear and doubt behind the dwarf’s bright exterior. He knows that look because he’s worn it too, and he would take it away, or bear as much of it as he could, but there was no forcing it. That he had learned from experience.

 “Okay, okay,” Bilbo is laughing when he pulls back. “I get it. It’s nothing.”

Kíli misses the look that says Bilbo knows it’s not nothing at all.

But there isn’t time to mention it, or do anything more than steal hidden kisses and exchange brief, whispered words over the next few days. Once they depart the few moments they’re afforded don’t lend themselves to being spent on things like that. At least not for now.

And by the time they reach the forest the jovial moods won back by their time at Beorn’s have all but evaporated.  Gandalf was taking his leave and they would be on their own within the dark forest. The dwarves were used to the dark, but not like this, and Bilbo was no lover of the dark at all. If he’s honest the look of the forest leaves him feeling somewhat claustrophobic, even after having traversed the goblin’s tunnels in the root of the mountains.

Still he doesn’t speak a word of the worry that nags in the pit of his stomach as he follows the others into the trees.

He’s not sure how it can be worse than he imagined but the feeling of eyes always watching creeps up his spine like a thousand spiders prickling their way along his skin. The days run together in the gloom of the forest and it’s hard to tell where a new day begins and the previous night ends. The warmth of Beorn’s hearth seems like a distant memory now. Despite that he is glad the others are there. Someone is always at his back; and whether that is on purpose or by coincidence he doesn’t know and he is too grateful to ask.

They continue on among trees gnarled with age and their progress is slowed even further when the path narrows and wanders, wavering between overgrown roots and bushes armed with thorns as long as Bilbo’s fingers.

“Careful there,” Kíli warns, catching his elbow before he tumbled face first into a nest of needles. “It would be a prickly business digging you out of there.”

Bilbo eyed the thorns guardedly and let the dwarf guide him back into the center of the path. “Indeed. You would almost have cause to leave me to my fate rather than try your luck against it.”

Kíli’s fingers brush against the nape of his neck briefly as he stops the hobbit short to nuzzle the top of his head while the others continue on ahead. “You won’t get rid of me so easily,” he murmurs before pulling back.

Bilbo can put a voice to the words of gratitude he has as the darkness of the forest continues to encroach ever closer but he squeezes Kíli’s fingers gently as the dwarf pulls him forward to catch up with the rest of the company.

It is a brief moment they’re allowed and it will be the only one they get for some time. As the forest grows ever thicker and ever darker Kíli and Fíli are sent to scout ahead, their keen eyes far besting any of the other company member’s sight.

At night—or when they presume night to be—exhaustion goes to war with the uneasiness that is pervasive in this place and many stand watch simply because sleep eludes them. Kíli is often among those who take extra watches, sharp eyes peering into the darkness in search of enemies that they all know are there but that continue to elude them. But there are brief spans of time when he forgoes the watch in favor of curling up against Bilbo’s back, and if he snuggles a bit closer as they both shiver where they lay neither one says a word.

They are perhaps more excited than they should be when they come to the river, for it means they are making progress against the endless wall of trees. The elation is short lived when they find that there is no way to cross and Beorn warned them against the dark waters. To attempt to swim it or to fall in would lead to nothing but folly.

They are about to turn around when a familiar shape takes form in the tangle of overgrowth on the far bank.

“A boat!” Bilbo exclaims, pointing.

Now they have the means to cross…almost.

When Kíli’s arrow snags on the boat allowing the company to tug it free of the forest’s hold Bofur slaps his back. “Well done, lad! That branch of yers isn’t a toy after all!”

It’s meant as a compliment, one of Bofur’s lighthearted gests but Bilbo sees Kíli’s fingers clench around his bow and the pinch at the corner of his eyes that is the only sign of the wince he holds in check.  And when the miner turns to join his brother and cousin Bilbo slides up beside him and ghosts his hand over the fist still clenched around his bow and smiles up at the dwarf. “You’ve saved us,” he murmurs in a voice only for Kíli.

The smile he earns isn’t as big as the usual but it is genuine.

“Will you teach me one day?”

Kíli blinks in surprise. “What? To use a bow?”

He nods.  “Yes, I think I’d like to learn. I mean I’ll probably have to have one made specifically for someone my size, but that’s neither here nor there.” When there’s no reply from the dwarf he continues on in a rush. “I mean if you’re amenable, of course.”

There’s no time to discuss specifics as Thorin is calling for Kíli to come help him with the boat but the dwarf fixes him with a grin as he turns away.

“Oh, I’m more than amenable, _Master Baggins._ ”

 

 

 


	7. Webs and Other Traps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The real story of the escape from the goblin's tunnels is told and spiders visit them in the darkness. Also, hard realizations are made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? Actual plot type things and another chapter so soon after the last?!? I apologize in advance if this feels rushed but I wanted to give some plot stuff and there are still many chapters to go.

“Stick close.”

It’s Thorin’s voice that breaks Bilbo’s focus on the webs that are easily ten times his size. He doesn’t want to think about how big the creatures that wove them must be. Their leader rests his hand on Bilbo’s shoulder, “You’ve survived the goblin’s tunnels and faced down wargs, but I’d prefer you not have to take your chances with any more beasts…at least until we reach Erebor.”

“I quite agree with you.” Bilbo swallowed thickly. He didn’t want to think about the dragon either.

Thorin favors him with a small smile and moves off.

They’ve stopped for a rest and while Nori and Bifur keep watch the rest bed down and are soon snoring. The rumble, once something that would have kept Bilbo up, was now comforting and gave he and Kíli just enough privacy to exchange some quiet words.

“Speaking of goblins—” Kíli says when they’re lying in the dark and he has one arm wrapped around the smaller man, the other tucked under his head. He nudges his nose against Bilbo’s cheek when the smaller man shudders at the mention of goblins. “You were going to tell me how you managed to escape the goblin’s tunnels.”

“I was?” Bilbo kisses Kíli’s chin.

“Yes, you were.”

He hadn’t told anyone exactly how he’d managed to find his way out of the goblin’s tunnels but if he owed the story to anyone it was Kíli.

“Alright, I’ll tell you.”

The surprise in Kíli’s voice makes Bilbo chuckle. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

In a quiet voice he tells Kíli about the fall, how he’d seen his life flash before his eyes as he tumbled, and how he’d come to among a pile of giant mushrooms. The knuckles Kíli has pressed to his mouth were scraped and bleeding but his attention had been focused on the creature crawling out of the shadows.

“Gollum?” He’s interrupted when he talks about the creature’s penchant for talking to itself as if it were two different people entirely.

“Hmmm.” Bilbo hums in agreement and inclines his head.

“And you challenged him to a game of riddles?”

“I did.”

They are both silent for a long moment.

“You want to hear the riddles, don’t you?” Bilbo finally asks.

“Maybe just one, if it’s not too much trouble.”

It isn’t any trouble and Bilbo smiles before he recites the one he’d first used on Gollum. It was one his father had teased him with when he had been a fauntling. “Thirty white horses on a red hill. First they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still.”

Bilbo feels Kíli’s grin against his lips. “Teeth,” he whispers.

“You’re correct.”

“Do I get a prize?”

Bilbo kisses him sweetly, letting his lips trail against the dwarf’s jaw before nudging their noses together. “How was that?”

“Excellent.”

“You’re easy to please.”

Kíli sneaks back in for another kiss. “Only for some.”

“Flatterer.”

If the dark hadn’t robbed him of his sight Bilbo would have said Kíli’s grin was a bit smug.  That is all but erased when the story progresses to a murderous creature chasing him through the darkened tunnels, and how he’d narrowly escaped through a crack in the rocks, losing all his buttons in the process.

“And he looked right through you without seeing? What kind of hobbit magic is this?” Kíli asks incredulously when Bilbo tells him how he’d finally managed to elude Gollum.

The cold brush of metal against the tips of his fingers begs him to lie. The ring was his, not to share, not to speak of. But this was Kíli and nothing his mind was saying made sense. Not even a little. “I’m afraid it’s not hobbit magic at all,” he tells him. “It was this ring I found.”

Whether Kíli can see in the darkness or not is unknown to Bilbo, but he pauses as if he sees the gold band in the palm of the hobbit’s hand between them. He is silent as he studies it.

“We have heard tales of the great rings of power,” Kíli says finally, closing Bilbo’s fingers around the ring, “In fact, great-grandfather had one of the seven great rings. But his story ended in disaster, as most of the others do. Keep it secret, Bilbo. I don’t know much about the power of magic rings but I’m sure it’s nothing to trifle with, and…”

Bilbo tucked the ring back into his pocket, smoothing the fabric over the metal circle. “And?”

When he doesn’t get an answer Bilbo brushes his fingers against Kíli’s cheek. “And?” he tries again.

“And…just make sure to keep it secret. Only use it if your life depends on it. Will you do that for me?”

Bilbo doesn’t think he’s telling him the whole truth but he doesn’t push it.

“I will.”

The relief in his voice is apparent, and tells Bilbo that what he suspected was true. There was something else. Something Kíli wasn’t saying.

“Thank you Bilbo. Thank you. Thank you.”

 

 

Had he known what was to come he might have made Kíli give him one of those archery lessons he promised him instead of telling him that story when the spiders descend upon them from the trees.

 _Not that a bow will help you much in here, my lad_ , he tells himself silently as he tucks himself behind a tree.

They’d been almost out of food by the time Bombur had awoken after his dip in the enchanted river and the dwarf had bemoaned the lack of rations—a sentiment shared by the rest of them. Bilbo had fallen asleep with his thin wool blanket pulled up over his shoulders and his face pressed into the crook of his arm. Somehow even here where the forest seems to encroach ever closer, where everything is claustrophobic, it’s cold. Winds seem to spring up out of nowhere and chill them through their layers of clothes. It was a miracle he had managed to sleep at all.

The dwarves help. Aside from easing off the edge of his unease they’re also walking furnaces. When Kíli snugs up behind him at night it’s a relief in more ways than one.

That relief is broken when he’s forced to face the giant spiders alone.

Fear nips at his heels, it dogs his step, but when he sees the dwarves strung up in webs and immobile it ignites in him a fire he hasn’t felt since he was an invincible fauntling fighting off imaginary goblins in the Shire. The danger is real now, but he won’t back down. He had jumped to Thorin’s defense without thinking, and now it was more than just their leader’s life at stake. They are all his friends, and they are counting on him. The entire company is hanging from the branches, and Kíli is among them. He can’t fail.

And he doesn’t.

Looking back later he’ll never be completely sure just how he managed to kill some of them with stones and lead them off with insults and a little help from his magic ring. It all happened in such a rush of action.

His hand closes about the ring in his pocket; he had promised Kíli he would only use it in the most dire of circumstances and surely this was one of them.

“You’ve missed one, you lazy lobs!” he calls just about the time one of the spiders was about to make a meal of what Bilbo could only assume was Bombur. He shoves the ring on his finger and whirls a stone at the giant arachnid. More stones follow, whizzing through the group of spiders and knocking some right out of the trees to fall to the ground dead.

The hobbits back home would be as bewildered by his sudden surge of bravery as the spiders were angry when he taunts them in a sing-song voice and leads them off, deeper into the forest.

It provides him with enough time to get back to the clearing and begin cutting down the dwarves. Fíli is first, and the blonde dwarf looks vaguely queasy as he sways on his feet. Despite his obvious discomfort he helps Bilbo and soon they have the rest of the company freed.

With no Gandalf around to take a head count Bilbo takes it upon himself to make sure they are all present and accounted for.

“Where’s—”

“There he is, the nasty little stinger!” The spiders had returned and the dwarves, not yet fully recovered from the effects of the spider’s venom, rally as best they can to their own defense.

 _Too many_ , Bilbo tells himself, _there are too many!_

“Go!” he shouts. “I’ll draw them off!”

In one of those brief, stretched moments where everything is happening so fast but time seems to pause regardless Bilbo meets Kíli’s confused gaze and he hopes he looks appropriately apologetic before he shoves the ring back on his finger. Shouts erupt from the dwarves but Bilbo has no time to explain. Not if they want to have time for anything later.

And he finds that nothing works better to draw the spider’s attentions than more insults and hacking at their legs with his blade.

“Where is he?! Find the stinger! Bleed him dry!” the spiders hiss as they search for him, all but forgetting about the dwarves.

 _Sting indeed!_ It is enough of a distraction to allow the dwarves to reform a defense and retreat back among the trees to a wide open circle and its openness seems to give their enemy pause. The spiders drop their pursuit and scurry back into the forest.

Perhaps it should give them pause, make them wonder but they are just thankful for the reprieve.

Kili yanks him into a hug as soon as he appears from the bushes.

“You’re alright!”

Bilbo pats his face gently and then sets his hands on his knees and wills his heart to stop pounding. His shoulders are tense from exertion and his hands feel like claws unwilling to bend. His fingers ache from where they had gripped his blade.

“Bilbo, you saved us—how did you save us?” The company is looking at him with wide eyes. They had not forgotten his disappearing act.

He looks down at the ring that sits heavy in the palm of his hand.

But before he can answer Kíli is shoving the ring back on his finger, making him hiss in pain as it forces its way over his swollen knuckles. Bilbo opens his mouth to protest but shuts it when he sees the elves melting from the forest, bows drawn and trained on them.

“Well, well, well. What have we here?”

 

 

There is magic in the elf king’s halls but it isn’t the same as what Bilbo felt in Rivendell. It makes his feet tingle, like he’s been walking through hot sand and his nose twitches even as he stands stock still in the shadows of Thranduil’s kingdom. It’s not as if he could be seen, at least he doesn’t think so. The ring has shielded him from everything else; it should be no different here, even against the keen eyes of the elves.

Thranduil has kept the dwarves locked up for days now and he seems unmotivated to talk with them, let alone release them. Every day Bilbo hopes the elf king will make some decision, and every day ends with the same exhausting disappointment. It’s looking as if he will need to rescue the dwarves himself. It will be a hard task to be sure—especially with no Gandalf to rescue them this time.

 _At least they’re not trolls_ , he tells himself. Though trolls may have proven easier to trick, if more disgusting.

He is standing stock still in the shadows of the king’s chambers. He had slipped in here ahead of the approach of a group of guards and found the room to be less than empty. The elf king sits draped over his throne.

“How long do you plan to keep them, my lord? Eventually someone will miss them.”

The elf king inclines his head to fix his gaze on the elven guard who had spoken. “Will they? Who is to say they were not devoured by the dragon? Or were lost to the forest’s treachery?”

“Then you mean to keep them in the dungeons?”

“And if I do? They live long lives for mortals, Tauriel, what are a few months lost to them? Nothing. They may not speak of their errand, but I have not lived all these thousands of years to not see between the lines. If I were to let them go they risk unleashing the fury of a dragon to the ruin of more than just their company.”

The king continues to speak but Bilbo finds himself suddenly confronted by a realization that should have struck him far sooner.

The dwarves are a long lived race. Far longer than hobbits, to be sure.

He had fifty years left in his life if he was lucky and the journey didn’t kill him first. Kíli had well over a hundred...perhaps far more. If this continued, if they survived this quest and reclaimed the mountain, and Kíli still favored him with sweet kisses he would grow old and die well before the dwarf reached his majority. And he would suffer through Bilbo’s death and be forced to live with the weight of his loss for decades.

Bilbo knew the heavy curtain of pain and longing that lingered when one was left to navigate through the wreckage of their lives after the death of a loved one. It had still sapped his strength some mornings when he had lain in bed staring up at the ceiling of his parent’s home.  It still pulled at his heart as he walked the same roads they had, and cared for the garden his mother had tended to so lovingly for so many years.

It was a part of life, to be sure, but he didn’t wish that on anyone. Especially not Kíli.

 _How have I been so blind?_ He asked himself.

His breath catches in his throat and he feels the blood drain from his face as the elf king stills as if he’d heard him. He needs to slip away before he’s discovered.

With so much on his mind he doesn’t realize where he’s headed until he’s already there.

In the quiet outside Kíli’s cell Bilbo slumps to the ground with barely a sound.

“Bilbo? Is that you?” the dwarf’s voice is hushed.

For a long moment he doesn’t reply. “It’s me,” he finally says letting his head rest against the door. The guards have made their rounds and will not pass by this way again for a couple of hours. He has time to rest.

“Are you alright?” He almost feels the warm press of Kíli against his back, even though a thick wood and iron door separates them.

“Me? I’m not the one locked up in a cell,” Bilbo replies.

“You might as well be, having to hide away all this time. But you didn’t answer my question. Are you alright?”

What does he say to that? What can he say? The thought of leaving Kíli to despair, of making him suffer through Bilbo’s decline in to the indignities of old age is a hard thought to bear. It hounds him even when he should be focused on more pressing matters.

“Bilbo?”

“I’ve just a lot on my mind,” he finally says. “Like how I’m going to get the lot of you out of here.”  His chuckle is a soft, forced thing and it ends too quickly. They both know it.

“That’s not the only thing that troubles you,” Kíli replies. It’s not an accusation, just an observation and maybe a bit of a plea. _Talk to me_ , his words beg. _Tell me what’s wrong._ But Bilbo can’t bring himself to explain.

“No, it’s not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on this chapter:
> 
> 1\. I took liberties with the spiders--done from the book and my own artistic license. 
> 
> 2\. When Bilbo thinks about how long Kíli has left to live and thinks "well over a hundred years", I'm going off the current assumption that he doesn't know exactly how long dwarves lives or exactly how old Kíli is. :)
> 
> Any errors are my own.


	8. An Escape Hard Earned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From this point out there will be spoilers for **The Desolation of Smaug**. It will still be canon-divergent, but just telling you up front--- **SPOILERS**. 
> 
> Escaping from the woodland realm is no easy feat, and more than an iron door separates Bilbo and Kíli.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry for how long this takes me to update. Truly. I haven't forgotten it and I will finish it. Thank you for sticking with me. xo

He hears it in Bilbo’s voice, that same exhaustion he’s heard all his life. The kind sleep won’t fix. It’s what he hears when he’s worn out his welcome, when he’s become more trouble than he’s worth. It sends a hot coal into the pit of his stomach and he’s afraid of what it means. He’s afraid that the whisper in the back of his mind telling him that this was all too good to be true was right.

The door between them only spans inches but it might as well be miles for all the good it does him.

“I’m sorry.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the door. Bilbo's voice is earnest and warm when he finally speaks. “Why are you sorry?”

Why was he sorry? He didn’t know what he’d done but he wanted to undo it. “For whatever has created this distance between us.”

“I don’t think we can blame you for the door, Kíli,” Bilbo says, once again sounding tired but teasing.

But he can't find his humor. “Not for the door. That’s not what I mean.”

Silence answers him for a moment so long he wonders if Bilbo’s gone. When his voice sounds from the other side of the door it’s a relief and Kíli slouches against the door wishing he could will away wood and iron.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. Not one thing.”

The words don’t fix whatever lies between them but it’s a weight off of his shoulders. He doesn’t remember if anyone’s ever actually said that to him before.

“You’re the first person that’s had no reason to accept me for all my faults, but accepted me all the same,” Kíli tells him, cheek pressed against the door. It's an admission he hadn't expected to make and it pulls at feelings that are tight and painful from disuse. “I don’t want to lose that.”

“Kíli.” Bilbo’s voice is above him now and he looks up to see him standing against the iron bars twisted and shaped to look like vines. He stands and presses his forehead forward to rest against Bilbo’s. “It has taken me a long time to come to terms with being different, but one thing I know for certain is that just because people don’t value our differences doesn’t mean they are our faults.”

He wants to believe Bilbo, even wants to force himself to agree in the moment only to think better of it later, but he can’t. A lifetime of doubt doesn’t go away in an instant as much as he wants it to.

“I know that’s easier to hear than to believe,” Bilbo continues as if he can read his mind. His voice is a whisper, they don’t have any desire to attract the guards' attention. “And I don’t expect you to take my word for it, but I’m going to keep on saying it.”

The soft touch on his cheek makes Kíli open his eyes. “Whatever we are…whatever this is…it’s something I—cherish. I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to lose you.” Maybe he should also tell Bilbo how he really feels. Maybe this is way past something to cherish. Maybe it’s love. But he’s afraid that declaration will have the opposite effect than what he needs. He’s never felt more at peace in his own skin than he does now, with Bilbo.

The press of lips against his nose pulls his mind to the present. “I cherish it too, and no part of me wants it to end.”

It’s enough to ease the squeezing feeling in his chest, a small enough reassurance to let him focus on the warmth of Bilbo’s skin on his and not about how even in the darkness Bilbo looked pale and exhausted. They have to get out of here soon. Not just for the sake of their quest, but for Bilbo as well.

“Put your ring back on, Bilbo,” Kíli whispers. “Rest here for a bit, but don’t let yourself be seen.”

The hobbit nods, curls dull and bouncing against his forehead. “Yes, alright.”

It is still a shock to see him disappear before his eyes but he hears the soft brush of cloth against the stones steps and the soft creak of metal as a tired head leans against it.

"When I was a child I used to roam the upper halls in Ered Luin," Kíli murmurs and he hears Bilbo hum in response. "They were quieter there, not as many dwarves frequented them, especially in winter. The vents were too large and the wind would whip through them if it was blowing just right. The tapestries would whip around and make the most haunting sounds. It was chilling but it was one of my favorite places. And sometimes when Fíli was busy with uncle at the forges or when I slipped away only to get in trouble later I would go up there. I'd stand in front of those vents and close my eyes and it felt like I was flying. Like I could go anywhere.

"It was like I could travel far away without ever leaving. It was the best escape I had."

He'd imagined a wide world behind his eyes. He'd seen snowcapped mountains and wide deltas sliced by rivers sparkling blue beneath a wide sky. Later he had pictured a wide lake and a lone peak rising toward the clouds, but it was only after hearing uncle's stories that he'd dreamed of them. For years he's told himself that those tales were his too, that he longs for a home beneath the mountain. He's told himself that for so long he has almost convinced himself it's true.

Almost.

"Who are you talking to?"

The captain of the guard, the red-haired elf Tauriel, appeares outside his cell standing just feet away from where Bilbo had been sitting…where he might still be sitting.

Panic floods Kíli’s veins for a moment before he remembers that Bilbo is invisible. He hopes he'll have slipped away. "No one. Myself."

"So you are no one then?" The red haired guard smirks but there is no ill will in her face.

"Perhaps I am."

She studies him for a long moment but then changes the subject, her attention going to his hands. "What is that you carry?"

He had pulled out the stone his mother had given him before they'd left while he'd been talking to Bilbo. The smooth edges were warm against the pads of his fingers as he turns it over and over. "It is a promise."

"A promise?"

"My mother gave it to me so I would remember my promise to come back to her. She worries, you see. She thinks I'm reckless."

He tells himself he doesn't hear a soft snort from somewhere near the guard's knee but when she pauses as if she hears it too he stands drawing her attention. "And she might be right."

As if on cue the token slips from between his fingers and only the quick reflexes of his elven captor saves is from bouncing right over the edge into the cavern below. She holds it up in the dim light and studies the carved runes. “So it would seem.”

There’s the swell of voices and laughter from far off and he looks out from between the bars. “Sounds like quite the party up there.”

She nods, eyes distant in a look Kíli is intimately familiar with. There is longing there and fondness. But there is sorrow beneath her eyes too. “It is the feast of starlight.”

“I have always thought starlight seems like such a cold light. It is so distant…remote.”

The red hair spilling down her back sways as she shakes her head. “It is memory! The Eldar love all light, but the wood elves love best the light of the stars. It is pure and precious… like your promise.”

She holds out the stone to him and he takes it, grateful to have it back. “You have my thanks.”

Her lips quirk up in the hint of a smile, soft and honest. "Your friend that walks in shadows and hides in plain sight. Will he not come out?"

Kíli almost drops the stone again, and he hopes his face doesn't belie Bilbo's presence. He stares at the guard blankly. "What friend?"

"The one you were talking to."

"I don't know what you mean," Kíli replies. "I was talking to myself."

She may not believe him but she doesn’t persist.

In the end that love of starlight aids in their rescue thought it is neither as easy or simple as they might have liked. Sneaking past drunk elven guards and climbing into empty wine barrels seems a foolhardy plan, but it seems the best they have, at least until they hit the river gate. Elves are deadly in their own right, but they can be reasoned with. Orcs are another matter entirely, and they have been pursued far into the woodland king’s realm.

Unarmed and far outnumbered they are cattle lined up for slaughter here. They must act and Kíli takes their one chance for escape, and it costs him.

The pain makes him freeze as the shaft pierces his thigh. The force of the impact sets the arrow tip digging against bone. It is the worst pain he’s ever felt, as if there are claws digging into his flesh making it burn.

“KÍLI!”

His brother’s shout is an anchor through the pain. _They are counting on you_ , he tells himself.

When an elf arrow, from Tauriel no less, downs the orc standing over him he takes advantage of the opening to pull down on the heavy wooden lever, a cry of pain pushing past his lips unbidden as he puts weight on his injured leg. But he manages to open it, to give them a shot and as he slips over the side of the ledge causing the shaft to break off as it hits the rim of his barrel he slumps forward under the wave of nausea and pain that follow.

Fíli is pulling him upright smoothing back the hair from his eyes as he assures himself, at least for the moment, that his brother still lives.

“Are you alright?” Kíli asks, panting as he finds his brother’s hand to squeeze it briefly.

“I’m fine, Kí. Just fine.”

“And Bilbo?” Kíli whispers, breath ragged as he leans against the side.

“Nori has him,” Fíli tells him and then they are barreling down the river and their battle is far from over.


	9. Race to the Lake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you've read this far you know there are spoilers for **The Desolation of Smaug**. It will still be canon-divergent, but just telling you up front--- **SPOILERS**. Also, I don't stick exactly to how things happen in the book or in the movies so there's that too. :)
> 
> The company makes an escape down river and tries to secure safe passage into Laketown.

Kíli’s scream of pain sends Bilbo’s heart slamming into his throat. He is pinned between barrels and everything has gone from a standstill to a panic in a heartbeat. The oak barrels are slippery but leave splinters lodged in the tips of his fingers as he fights to hold on. More than once his head slips beneath the frigid waters and he’s saved only by Nori’s quick hands pulling him back up.

If he can just climb over Nori’s barrel maybe he can get to the stairs. They’re not so far away. And Kíli is up there, his precious, impulsive dwarf. And he’s hurt, he might be--- He banishes the thought from his head as he hoists himself up over the edge of the barrel only to come face to face with an orc he hadn’t seen coming Nori is fighting him off with a small knife he’s procured somewhere and Bilbo lurches forward with Sting, effectively ending the fight.

There’s another pained groan from over their heads and Bilbo scrambles for purchase against the wood, trying to get to the stone ledge. “Kíli!”

But the cold water has made his fingers stiff and they ache from where they are frozen around Sting’s hilt. He can’t do anything but whirl around and look for Fíli in the hope that he can do something Bilbo can’t, but he is met with wide eyes filled with the same panic that stabs him in the chest. Before either of them can say anything a hand grabs him by the scruff of his collar, tugging at his hair and making him wince and he is pulled roughly against the side of a barrel.

“Hold on!” Nori tells him, his voice raised over the rushing water and the sudden groan from the metal gates. “Hold on, Bilbo!”

It is all he can do.

His mother had told him how in moments of peril time seems to slow, and he’d never quite understood what she meant before this quest. He does now. He gets it. In agonizing slowness he feels his heart clench in his chest as he tries to see Kíli through the raging water but it’s impossible, he’s barely keeping his head above the surface. The chill of the water numbs him to the bones as he feels his legs bash against some rocks below the surface and he knows it should hurt but there is no pain—not yet. His ears are roaring with the river’s fury, and if there’s a moment between rapids he hears the shouts of his friends, the thud of arrows sinking into oak barrels, and the sharp ring of swords and axes and spears. And he can do nothing.

He should be concerned for his own life as he’s halfway drowned already but instead the seconds slow for him to worry for his friends. Was Kíli alright? Was Fíli? And Thorin? This quest would be for naught if he fell. They were strong fighters but they were at a disadvantage, even his inexperience could tell him that. They were forced to go where the river took them, and their enemies could use that to their advantage.

The dwarves may hate the elves, but they were the only reason they still stood any chance.

And that Kíli yet lived.

Bilbo swallows thick around the knot in his throat. _He will survive_. _He must._

All these thoughts fly through his mind until time suddenly speeds back up.

“Bilbo!” Nori grabs him as the current tries to drag him down again and the middle Ri brother is wielding an orc sword he didn’t have before.

“If I we survive this I will owe you, Nori,” Bilbo splutters and he thinks the red-haired dwarf grins before he’s fighting for their lives once more.

It might takes minutes or hours or mere moments but eventually the attacks fall away, the river carrying them faster than the orcs can move on foot and Bilbo manages to hitch his elbow over the side of the barrel, every breath haggard and painful. He’s more than half-drowned. He doesn’t ever want to go swimming again. Not for fun or by means of escape.

“Alright there Bilbo?” Nori asks.

He manages a nod. “Still alive. Can you—are you able to see—” The request seems so personal. He should be concerned for all of his friends but Kíli, his dwarf, he just needs to know.

“He’s back a ways still, but he looks lively enough,” the thief assures him, reading the emotion on his face and giving him a pat on the shoulder.

Relief floods him as surely as the river has and he lays his head against his arm. Maybe he nods off, or maybe he only blinks, but the next thing he knows his feet are scraping the bottom of the river and dwarves are crawling from their barrels at the rocky shoreline, pulling themselves onto land looking as bedraggled as Bilbo felt.

They had reached the lake.

There will be a time later for bandaging his bloody shins and pulling the splinters from beneath his nails. When there’s a moment to spare he will wring out his jacket that should probably be left behind for all the good it does him now. But right now he has no time to spend on trivial things. And only one thing isn’t trivial to him now. It’s not a mountain, or a dragon, or an orc pack on their heels. It’s a stubborn dwarrow with an arrow in his thigh and pain making him gray in the face. It’s the blood still pooling on the rocks beneath their feet and the fact that the smile he tries to give Bilbo upon seeing him is nothing more than a grimace.

 It’s enough to make him scramble and slip on the wet stone as he hurries to where Kíli is bent over his leg, hands covering the wound, trying to will away the pain.

“Let me see,” Bilbo murmurs to him. “Love, let me see.”

He is too busy to notice the way Kíli’s eyes widen at the endearment, or even to curse himself for getting so attached. He pries the dwarf’s hands away and looks to Fíli who joins them.

“It’s nothing,” the younger dwarf tries to assure them. “I’m fine.”

Bilbo glares at him. “You’ve an arrow sticking out of your leg, you’re not fine.”

“It’s only part of an arrow,” Kíli retorts trying to coax some softer look onto Bilbo’s face.

Bilbo makes some sound partway between a sigh and grumble and let’s Fíli take his place over the wound.

When Thorin tells them to get on their feet Bilbo almost rounds on their leader with something akin to a snarl, but he reins himself in. _Does he not see his nephew is wounded?_

“Kíli’s wounded,” Fíli says before he can open his mouth, and it’s probably for the best. “His leg needs binding.”

“The orcs will be upon us soon, we have no time,” Thorin replies, attention elsewhere. Behind them, ahead of them, Bilbo can’t tell. “We must go.”

“Thorin,” Bilbo says in a voice that is soft but as solid as iron. “Your _nephew_ is injured.”

“We will all be worse than injured if they catch us here, Master Baggins,” Thorin replies but his voice doesn’t carry the same condescension it had once not so very long ago. He drops his eyes to his nephews and then looks back at the hobbit. “Bind his leg. You have two minutes.”

Fíli is already halfway done and Kíli sets his hand on Bilbo’s shoulder as he joins the brothers. “I’ll be alright Bilbo,” he assures him. “I’ve had worse.”

“Have you?” he asks seriously, hazel eyes searching dark ones for the truth.

“Well maybe not quite so bad,” Kíli admits. “But I’m still alive aren’t I? I’m a fighter.”

“I don’t doubt that.” And it wasn’t what Bilbo doubted. Not Kíli’s knack for getting in and out of trouble. Not the fact that he’s still alive despite seventy-odd years of mischief. It’s that here, now, they’re being pursued with a ferocity Bilbo hasn’t known, and they will be killed if they’re caught. It’s that the arrow in Kíli’s leg feels wrong—but he can’t tell why or if he’s imagining it. There’s no way for him to know. It is only the prickle of wrongness that sets him off. It worries him.

But there is no time to figure out just why because as injured as he is Kíli is suddenly moving, pushing Bilbo behind him and Fíli comes to stand beside him, two heavy bodies blocking him from something.

Or rather, someone.

The bowman is fierce looking but not inclined to violence, at least not without provocation.

“His bow is longer than you are tall,” Bilbo murmurs when they’re making their way to the barge he has navigated across the lake in search of the barrels. Kíli is leaning heavily on his shoulder.

“It’s not the size of the bow that matters,” Kíli retorts a bit stiffly. “It’s how you use it. If you get my drift, my hobbit.”

Bilbo flushes and smirks up at the dwarf. “I couldn’t get it any more clearly if it came up with a piece of wood and smacked me in the face. You are not as subtle as you think you are.”

Kíli grins, and it is almost half-convincing if it weren’t for the grimace of pain that follows. He settles himself against the low stone wall while Balin negotiates their passage. Bilbo knows they need the lakeman’s help if they are to outrun these orcs, at least for the moment. They will never manage on foot. The barge is the only way, and every minute spent trying to negotiate is a minute closer to their arrival.

The rest of the company seems to feel the same way and every time an offer by Balin is rebuffed they grow more anxious until the tension is palpable. Finally, when he can’t stand it anymore he steps up next to Balin. “Please, all we ask is for passage into the city, provisions and what weapons our money will buy. We need your help.”

The man looks down at him, but not in the way the big folk are often keen to do. There is no disdain in it, only curiosity and a wariness earned by a hard life. “You are no dwarf.”

“Most certainly not. I am a hobbit.”

If it’s possible for the man to look any more surprised he manages it. “A hobbit? I can’t say that I’ve seen any of your kind around here before, Master…”

“Baggins. Bilbo Baggins, and I’m not surprised. My kind don’t often venture east.”

He is silent for a long moment. “I am Bard of Laketown, and you ask quite a lot, Master Baggins.”

“Yes, yes, I know, but we don’t do so lightly.”

Bard still hesitates as he looks at the group then back to Bilbo before turning back to his barrels. “I know where these barrels come from, and I don’t know what business you had with the elves but I can tell it did not end well.”

Balin tries to grab his elbow as he steps onto the barge, into the man’s space, “I know we ask a lot of you, and perhaps your hesitation is because you have someone you have to get home to. Maybe several someones. A family?”

Brown eyes meet his and he is rewarded with the most imperceptible of nods. “Aye. Three children. They depend on me.”

“I understand what it means to have family depending on you, and how you mean to protect them and help them as best you can. Those dwarves are my family. It may seem strange, but I need to get them to safety. I wouldn’t ask if there were any other way,” he tells him in a low voice.

“The master of laketown gets his money from trade with the woodland realm. He would see you and your kin in chains before he risks that income.”

“And he would see in irons anyone who helped us. I know what we ask of you and yours,” Bilbo replies. But he has to ask. He looks back at Kíli who’s leaning heavily on Fíli’s shoulder, face twisted in pain. The bowman follows his gaze.

“You will need a smuggler to get you into the city unseen.”

It is Balin that interrupts, joining their conversation from Bilbo’s shoulder. “For which we are willing to pay double.”

The price is accepted and Balin turns to tell the others.

“I cannot guarantee their safety once they’re in the city, Master Baggins.”

Bilbo looks back at the dwarves still dripping wet and wary.

“You have my gratitude all the same.”


	10. The Darkness Spreads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things take a turn for the worse in Laketown. 
> 
> If you've read this far you know there are **spoilers** for **The Desolation of Smaug**. It will still be canon-divergent, but just telling you up front--- **SPOILERS**. Starting with this chapter I am going to be parting ways with many things canon. Consider yourself warned. Hope you still like it!

A sense of relief settles over Bilbo once they cast off, and he takes it for all it’s worth because he knows it will be fleeting. At least for the moment they have a time to catch their breath when they’re not being set upon by wargs, or spiders, or locked away behind iron bars.

The lake air is refreshing even if it carries the first bite of winter with it. Kíli’s head is resting on his hip as he sits tucked between Bilbo and his brother. The wound has stopped bleeding but it still sits uneasily in Bilbo’s mind. He wishes Gandalf were here. As pesky as the old wizard could be he trusted his judgment in matters like this.

“So tell me, Master Baggins, you said your kind do not venture east. Why is that?"

Bard isn’t watching him; his eyes are on the grey waters, on the distant shore. Bilbo knows that look well. He has worn it too.

"Our home is not like other places, Master Bard. And when hobbits leave it...well they just aren't the same again. There's something different about them—well I guess I should say ‘us’ now. We're always wandering, never quite as settled as we were before.

“The one thing you should know about us is that we are creatures of habit. Those who leave the Shire never really fit in quite the same way with the others afterwards. Neighbors, relatives, they always look at you with a bit of suspicion. A bit of wonder. Maybe it's that they wish to know what's out there beyond the borders of our lands. More likely it's that they don't wish to think if it at all and we’re a constant reminder.” Bilbo shakes his head. That was the most likely explanation.

A sigh escapes his lips and Kíli stirs at his side, his hand gripping Bilbo’s ankle in silent support. "But at the end of the day, it's just an old tale, passed down through generations. Do not venture east, my lad, or parts of you will never come back to the Shire." His father had told him that tale, though never as a warning. At least not directly. His mother had shook her head and laughed when Bungo did. _It's just an old wives tale, my dear Bilbo. Don't listen to your father._

The lakeman looks thoughtful. "So what prompted you to do so if such a thing is true?”

The man's eyes meet his and he's suddenly focused on the hobbit, intent on the answer.

“My mother was one for adventures. When she was young she travelled far and wide and I grew up on the stories of her travels. It seems I am a lot like her after all,” Bilbo says, hoping it will pacify this line of questioning without divulging the real reason for their quest.

“And she approves of your travels now, as far as they have taken you?”

The lump in his throat is hard to swallow but he forces himself to wear half of a smile. “Were she still alive I think she would approve very much. As it were she passed many years ago…too soon really.” The last part is barely a whisper, something true but hard to say.

Kíli’s hand leaves his ankle and callused fingers tangle with his own.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Bard says solemnly in a way that tells Bilbo he knows of that hurt too.

“No, no, it was years ago,” Bilbo replies as if the time makes it hurt less. As if he doesn’t grieve for his parents still. There’s a squeeze around his fingers and he looks down into the dark eyes of the dwarf he doesn’t wish the same heartache on. The one he can’t let go of regardless.

Kíli tucks his head against his shoulder when Bilbo slumps to the deck beside him. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine,” Kíli assures him. “Feeling much better.”

Maybe he puts on a brave face for Bilbo, or maybe it's a habit. Bilbo suspects it’s a bit of both. In the time he’s been travelling with the company he knows the dwarves are never ones to show weakness. He suspects it’s a warrior thing; on the battlefield showing weakness will only get you killed. But they are not in battle now, and when he looks at the rest of the company they don't seem as composed as they normally do.

It’s not the first time since he set out from his door that he wonders what lies ahead of them. It's more than just a mountain and a dragon now. Every day brings more obstacles for them to overcome. There's more danger than he imagined, more than he thought possible. And it's not just his life he's concerned about anymore. The return to Bag End is not his biggest worry now. He knows he’ll return a changed hobbit, he already is changed. Those are trivial things. Such little, simple things.

Kíli’s eyes are closed and Bilbo looks around him to Fíli who meets his gaze with a strained smile. Fíli may try to protect his brother, but he can't hide the worry on his face. He knows the wound is not fine. Not even close.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget how young they are by their kin’s standards. They are strong and even though their bravery borders on recklessness sometimes they are noble, just like their uncle, and they know how to defend themselves.  They are warriors. It makes it so easy to forget they’re barely past their majority.

Bilbo reaches across Kíli and squeezes Fíli’s fingers gently where they’re resting against his brother’s uninjured leg.

“He’ll be alright,” he whispers, and neither of them knows whether it’s a statement or a desperate wish.

Fíli just squeezes his fingers a little tighter.

 

Laketown is cold, Bilbo thinks to himself, and he wonders if it’s just that winter is fast approaching, if the chill that’s worked its way deep into his bones is just the cold air coming down from the mountain. It would be so much simpler if it was but he doubts he’s as lucky as that.

Bard had snuck them into his home—that was a task Bilbo wouldn’t care to recall or repeat—and once he’d gotten Kíli settled in a chair near the fire, and Oín had shooed him off so he could see to the prince’s wound, he sat in the open window on the topmost floor. People scurried across the docks and walkways. There was no idle chitchat or called greetings. These people were wary and distant. Life was hard and they had learned that lesson first hand.

From the floor below he can hear Oín grumbling, and he tilts his head to listen.

“You know he doesn’t, Oín, it’s cracked… of no use…”

He recognizes Thorin’s voice, but Bilbo can’t fathom what they were referring to.

“Even a cracked heartstone may be better than nothing.” That was Oín.

Their voices fade and Bilbo leans over the railing to look down. Kíli is asleep, his brother is sitting cross legged next to his head, chin against his chest looking just as exhausted as Bilbo feels.

 _Heartstones?_ He hasn’t heard the term before—none of his companions had ever mentioned such a thing. It’s not surprising really, if it’s as intimate a thing as the name suggests. The dwarves keep their secrets close.

“Bilbo?”

He jumps, feeling a bit guilty for eavesdropping if he’s honest with himself, and turns to Bofur. The dwarf has a cup of tea in his hands that he holds out.

“Thanks Bofur.”

It nothing like the tea back home—too old to be anything but a bit stale, but it’s hot and it curls in his belly like an ember briefly warming him against the persistent chill of the lakemen’s town.

He almost bites his tongue but if he’s to ask anyone aside from one of the brothers about something to do with dwarf culture he runs the best chance of an honest answer with the toymaker.

“Bofur, do you have a moment?”

If he’s surprised at Bilbo’s desire for his company he hides it well. “Of course.” He sits down on the sill opposite Bilbo.

“I—I, um, heard—that is to say—” He knows he risks asking about something the dwarves will never tell him, that the question he wants to ask will offend. He takes a deep breath and asks anyway. “When Oín mentions heartstones what is he talking about?”

He waits for Bofur to leave without a word. To give him a look that says he shouldn’t be asking such personal things. He’s no dwarf after all. But the good-natured toymaker rocks back and furrows his brow. After a long minute he finally speaks. “I’m trying to think of a way to explain without making us seem crazy—crazier,” he amends with a little chuckle.

 “A heartstone is a precious thing to us dwarves, you see. When a child is expected, and they’re a rare blessing nowadays, the father travels deep into the heart of a mountain. He’s not looking for a cut stone, that’ll be up to the child to do when they’re older. He may find it that first day or it may takes him weeks—took my da three months to find Bombur’s. Our mam about had a fit at him being gone so long.” He laughs at the memory and his eyes are twinkling below the brim of his hat.

“Three months? That’s quite a while!”

“It’s your child so you don’t mind much,” Bofur tells him with a wink.

Of course. They don’t have any such traditions in the Shire but the love for one’s child is no different in the Shire. A parent will go to any length for their child.

“The stone is always with the child, first with the mother and then once the wee dwarrow is born with them. It is up to each dwarf how they choose to display it, what it calls them to do. Some cut the stone, finish it. Others leave it as it was found—a testament to the rock from which they were carved.”

Bilbo tilts his head, “The rock from which they were carved?”

“Oh aye, you see a heartstone is a part of a dwarf, said to be the piece to ground them to the stone they’re carved from. It is there to remind us who we are, what we are. It isn’t magic, not in the way people normally think, but it can help slow poison, or protect us from a grievous wound long enough to get to a healer.”

_It’s cracked… of no use…_

He doesn’t ask Bofur what happens when a heartstone is cracked. He tells himself it’s because it’s none of his business, or that he will ask Kíli. Or maybe he doesn’t want to know the details of what such an occurrence might mean. It’s not because when he looks at Kíli, when he thinks of all the pieces of his dwarf, his handsome, endearing dwarf, he already knows what a toll it takes.

At least that’s what he tries to tell himself.

 

 

 

Fire is burning in his veins. Every beat of his heart sends the waves out until they are plucking at his nerve endings like he used to pluck at the strings of his uncle’s harp with the fingers of a child.

“Drink this.”

Oín is hovering over him and he helps Kíli lift his head enough to swallow the pain tonic he’s brewed. It claws at his empty stomach with an icy grip and while it helps he knows that ice can only hold its own against fire for so long.

But he is grateful for the reprieve.

“There you are. Awake at last.”

Kíli turns his head and finds Bilbo sitting by his head, a smile tugging at his lips even if worry is written into every line on his face.

“Bilbo.”

Fingers play against his jaw moving up to card through his hair, tangled as it may be. “So this is nothing, is it?”

“Perhaps it’s not ‘nothing’.” His eyes travel around the room. “Where is everyone?”

“Your uncle’s taken most of the company to bargain with the master of Laketown, against Bard’s advice. Oín’s still here, and Bofur. I offered to stay behind and keep an eye on you.” Bilbo smiles down at him, tired lines pulling at his eyes making him look sad despite it.

“You don’t need to keep an eye on me,” Kíli says, trying to joke but gasping against a stab of pain that has Bilbo calling for Oín. Fingers card through his hair, teasing his scalp and helping him anchor on a feeling that isn’t the pain shooting through his body.

“Obviously you are wrong again,” the hobbit scolds.

“Wrong again? Who says I’ve been wrong before?” His eyes are still squeezed tight against the pain and he feels like he’s burning beneath his skin.

The press of lips against his brow doesn’t chase away the pain but it is welcome regardless. “I distinctly remember you telling me just yesterday that your injury was, and I quote, “nothing”.”

He’s right, and as the pain subsides Kíli manages to grin up at him, hiding what’s left of the pain beneath his mask. He’s hidden it before after all. Oín bustles up, poking and prodding and muttering to himself under his breath, ignoring Kíli’s attempts to swat him away.

“I’ll fix something up,” he says at last and turns away.

“Can you tell me a story?”

The request draws Bilbo’s attention from Oín’s retreating form to him and a smile creases his tired face. “What kind of story?”

“About you.”

Fingers stroke the hair from his face, and they are a welcome cold against the fever on his brow. “I’m afraid that any story about me won’t be terribly interesting,” Bilbo says.

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

Bilbo bends down and Kíli is rewarded with a soft press of the hobbit’s lips against his own. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Runs in the family.”

Bilbo chuckles. “I have a few of those in my family as well.”

Kíli closes his eyes against the pain as Bilbo begins to tell him about some relatives that always try to steal his silver when they call on him. As the story unfolds Kíli tries to picture the place they’d met not so many months ago. So much had happened in such a short span of time. He knew there were rolling hills and round doors but for the life of him he could not see it anymore.

Maybe that shouldn’t be so surprising to him. He has felt the darkness spreading within him.

“Kíli? Love, can you hear me?”

He hears Bilbo’s voice but he can’t clear the fog in his mind. His eyes that have always seen through the thick darkness within the mountains of Ered Luin can’t see anything in the darkness that surrounds him now. 

“Oín! Something’s wrong!”

Whispers in his ear grow louder, more menacing. They pierce his consciousness and make him writhe in pain losing his focus on anything and anyone.

“KÍLI!”

He screams for help but there is no one. No one can see him or hear him through this darkness.

Oh, how he wishes for the light.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So as you can see I've added something, that something being heartstones. I received feedback that Kíli needed to be more different--that there needed to be something that really (physically) sets him apart. 
> 
> I wasn't ready to make it too crazy but I thought something like this could fit in with the dwarves and their "origins" in stone. If you have questions about why I did what I did or constructive criticism then know that I welcome them.


	11. We Fight and We Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You guys probably hate me, and rightly so. I'm sorry for making you wait so long. I have no good excuse except that my computer died and I lost everything and that sapped my motivation. But I'm trying, and I have not given up. 
> 
> So here's a new chapter... Kíli fights the darkness, and Bilbo just has to fight. Fight for his life, and his love. I'm sorry. This isn't the best chapter but I wanted to give you something after having waited for so long.

_How much more can go wrong?_

It is the wrong question to ask, Bilbo knows it as soon as the words creep into his mind.  Kíli is writhing on the bed, eyes clouded and fists clenched in pain. Oín is shouting, Bain is going through the packets of herbs that they have gone through twice already in search of something to help. It’s a futile exercise but Bilbo did the same thing when his father grew ill; when he had looked through the whole of Bag End for something that would help despite not having found anything the past dozen times. Bofur’s disappeared, on the hunt for kingsfoil but Bilbo isn’t convinced that anything green grows in this bleak place.

“Oín, we have to do something!”

He is shouting just to be heard.

“We need to get his fever down!” Oín tells him.

But Bilbo knows it’s not the fever. It’s not right, this sickness. He’s seen wounds fester. He’s seen infection. But this is something else. The look on the old healer’s face tells Bilbo he sees the same things but this is nothing he’s fought before. There are some things even his skills cannot overcome.

Bilbo can’t think about that. He had imagined a fiery death for them all, of being swept up into the maw of a great beast, but never losing someone like this. Never losing Kíli.

“Someone’s outside!” He hears the hope in Telda’s voice. She’s been at the window every few minutes looking for her father. _Maybe it’s Bofur. Maybe he’s found_ —the scream that follows interrupts any hopeful thoughts.

He is not meant for this, not for wielding steel and throwing himself at orcs, but he can’t dwell on that now. He has to act, and he does. Without hesitation. Kíli’s at risk, and the children, and for all that Bard has done for them Bilbo will at least try to protect them.

 _Of course, they are not without some skill themselves_ , he thinks wryly as Bain upends a bench and sends an orc stumbling back.

He’s left with little time to ponder anything else as he ducks beneath a wicked looking blade. His body, still sore from his ride down the rapids, protests as he plunges Sting into the Orc’s belly but he cannot falter now. He cannot let them win.

They are so close.

His eyes dart to Kíli who is still writhing in pain.

And yet so far.

 

 

 

There is nothing but darkness. Nothing but screams and whispers and snarls in a language he cannot understand, at least one that he shouldn't understand. But every second seems to bring with it a kind of sick realization that he is becoming a part of the dark. He is fading. It pierces his thoughts and claws at him, ever insistent in its demands even though he wants nothing more than to resist it.

The great mountain halls stretch before him and in his heart he knows more than a dragon dwells within the darkness there. The halls of his ancestors have fallen into shadow. Into ruin. The dwarves have always dealt with darkness and ever present dangers as they delve into the deep but this is worse. This is so much worse. The silence is deafening in a way that makes him want to clap his hands over his ears, for all that it will do no good.

And then there are the whispers. The ill-spoken portents of what will come to pass, of things he cannot hope to stop.

His kin will fall to darkness, maybe they already have. Maybe their fates were sealed long ago. The land will grow ever wilder, increasing only in danger and pain and hate. Nothing good will grow.

It festers even now, deep within him.

Through his agony he feels himself changing, being drained of everything that he was. He wants to fight but he is weighed down by the darkness. It is a blanket that stretches as far as the eye can see. And in this night there are darker things lurking than he had believed existed in the world today. Not trolls, or wargs, or orcs compare to this.

Nightmares are real.

The darkness is spreading.

The stone in his hand glows red and then burns his palm but he cannot drop it. The crack yawns wide before his eyes and to his horror the darkness seems to seep from it, like water from an underground spring.

_Your weakness brings only darkness._

The voice is a hiss or a growl or a boom in his ears. He strains to hear it even as it booms through his head so much he wants to clutch his hands over his ears. But be cannot move.

_You have always been different. Always wrong._

The pain chokes his throat, a tightness he cannot swallow around. A bitterness he cannot escape.

He can struggle but it does not help. He only watches as the darkness consumes him, envelops him from the inside out until he is not sure if there is anything left of who he was.

If he can even remember who he was.

And he falls.

 

 

 

Bilbo is very nearly crushed when the orc that had been advancing on him and the children suddenly pitches forward with a strangled howl and dies, an arrow protruding from his throat.

“Elves.”

Telda’s voice is just a whisper, filled with awe despite her fear. Her hands are clutching his arm as Bilbo does his best to shield a human child who is almost bigger than he is.

When they’d finally managed to escape the woodland realm Bilbo had felt quite confident that if he saw an elf before the end of the year it would be too soon. Now when Tauriel and the King’s son himself appear he can’t feel anything but relieved. At least for the moment.

The elves are deadly, as fierce as Beorn warned, but maybe in a different way than Bilbo was expecting.

They are almost like dancers as they whirl and bend, dodging blades and dealing blows. It seems effortless, surreal almost. He had caught glimpses of them as they’d plunged down the river but he hadn’t had the time or focus to really pay attention to just how lithe they were. How skilled.

“What—” his voice stutters, catches in a throat dry from shock. The orcs are either dead or had fled. “What are you doing here?”

The prince spares him a glance, “Never before have let orcs flee our lands.” He looks to his companion, his head bowing towards the door ever so slightly. “Tauriel, come.”

A pained cry interrupts them and Bilbo’s eyes fall on Kíli who has fallen to the floor writhing against Oín’s hold. The healer looks to him. “We are losing him.”

Ice runs through his veins as the reality of it hits him like a wave. Kíli will be lost to them all. “No,” his voice a pained whisper. It can’t end like this.

 _Don’t worry darling, the elves are the best healers in the whole of Middle Earth_. His mother’s voice was in his ear, just as he remembered it from all those nights she’d gathered him in her lap and told him stories.. She’d said that every time one of them had led her to Rivendell, seeking aid from the house of Lord Elrond. He knew not all elves were healers, but maybe…

“Please!” He whirls around to face the prince. To Tauriel. “Please help him!”

“I am no healer, halfling,” the prince says, but there is something in his eyes. Pity maybe? Regret? He turns to the door, pausing as he crosses the threshold. “I am sorry.”

This can’t be the end. He looks to Tauriel, to the one elf who spared Kíli half a moment.

“Tauriel.”

A thousand years of instinct has her following her prince to the door even as she looks back at him, emotions warring on her face.

When she disappears out the door Bilbo feels his heart plummet to his feet as the tears splash down his cheeks. It makes him realize how much he loves his reckless dwarf, how all of the warnings he gave himself were overlooked. It makes him almost miss when she comes back through the door, her hands clutching around a bundle of greenery in her hands.

She kneels beside Kíli eyes rising to Bilbo as she motions for him to join her.

“I can heal him,” she says and relief weighs him down, bows his head.

Two fingers tilt his chin up and hazel eyes meet green ones.

“But I will need your help.”

He swallows thickly around the lump in his throat and nods. “I--I am at your service.”

  


 

_Kíli._

When that first tendril of light pierces the looming shadows it nearly blinds him. It pierces him in much the same way as the darkness had but it was gentle, warming. The energy practically hummed with life, a gentle insistence to embrace it, to let it grow. It whispers to him, tells him his name. Reminds him.

_You are Kíli._

Within it there are images, fuzzy but discernible. Two brothers laughing. An uncle, burdened beyond his years, smiling. A hobbit humming to himself as he bakes. Oh how he wants those things; it feels like it's been ages since he's seen them. He has been lost to this darkness for so long. At least it seems that way.

It's a hum at first, a gentle vibration in his ear, drowning out the screams and indignant screeches beneath a harmony of voices. The words are unfamiliar to him, they flow and multiply, becoming a wave of sound that pushes back the darkness, that chases it from his veins. He tilts his head, thinking the words are in Khuzdul, but when he listens more closely they fade to be replaced by a flowing language he remembers from their time in Rivendell, from the guards of Mirkwood. Elvish. That too fades, until more voices swell and then fade, each adding to the harmony even in their differences.

_Come back to the light._

That's his mother's voice. He made her a promise.

_We need you here… I need you._

And Bilbo too.

_Brother, you need to return so we can reclaim the mountain. Our home._

Fili.

_Return now, Kíli. Come back to the light._

He recognizes that voice. Tauriel.

The darkness fades, the pain swells but then dulls, and its hold loosens. The fire eases in its desperate race through his blood. His lungs aren't quite so heavy anymore.

There are stars overhead, softly blinking, lighting the way. He can see the path laid out before his feet.

He knows the way back now.


	12. Words Unspoken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a filler chapter (though a long one). We're still in Laketown, but things will be moving along soon. Darkness sets in, the days of autumn are growing shorter with each passing hour, and somewhere ahead a dragon awaits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has come to my attention that someone has stolen this work and many of my other fics and posted them on a blog that is invite-only. The theft is hardly something I can control, save not posting anything ever, and I would hate to punish the rest of you by not finishing this or myself by ever writing again. So all I can say is this, to the fic thief, I can't imagine much satisfaction is had by claiming works as your own. I don't figure you can fathom how much it disappoints me that you've stolen it. But I'm not letting you sway me, and if you feel so inclined to steal anymore of this (and I would expect all of this to fall on deaf ears anyway), then just know that while I may not be invited to the blog where you post it as your own, I am aware you are doing it.

“He will be alright.”

Tauriel’s voice pulls him out of his stupor; it helps beat back the waves of exhaustion, relief, and receding panic.

She smiles down at him even as her hands never stop binding up the wound on Kíli’s leg. “I am in your debt, Lady Tauriel.”

Her laugh is soft, and somehow it reminds him of spring in the Shire. Of chimes, and the songbirds in the thickets…and peace. “You can call me Tauriel, and you must be the one that walks in shadows and hides in plain sight.”

“Bilbo Baggins, at your service,” Bilbo says with a stiff bow. “I apologize for sneaking about your home but you understand I hope?”

Her eyes flicker to where his hand is soothing back the hair from Kili's forehead and she inclines her head. "All will be forgiven, if you one day regale me with the tale of your grand escape."

Bilbo bows his head, and he misses the way her eyes linger on his face as his eyes drop to Kíli’s wounded leg. "It wasn't so grand. Not even close," he says softly, regret coloring his voice. He knew she heard it, he saw it in her face. She could hear the guilt. But it was not her place to comfort him, and he wasn’t sure it would have helped anyway.

"Nevertheless, you are the first and undoubtedly the most talented for also springing your thirteen friends." She waits until he meets her eyes and smiles softly. "I would like to hear the tale.... but another time."

She finishes binding the wound and turns to the door. "I look forward to us meeting again."

"Are you sure you must go?" he asks, knowing that the desperation is clear in his tone and not caring in the least. This is Kíli whose life hangs in the balance.

"I must, but your dwarf will be alright. It will take a couple days before he's up and about, but he will recover," she promises him.

Something in her face assures him of her honesty and his shoulders sag in relief. He doesn’t even think to argue that Kíli isn’t ‘his dwarf’. Not anymore. "You have my eternal thanks."

Her answering smile says his thanks are well received and then in one smooth turn she heads out into the night and is gone.

With a little bit of help from Bain they get Kíli moved back to the bed and they can all see he looks better. There's color in his face and he's breathing easily again. His fever has finally broken.

"Master Baggins?"

Bilbo turns to Telda who offers him a tentative smile, her face still drawn with worry regardless. "They won't be back, will they?"

"I shouldn't think so, dear heart," he says, even though he really has no idea at all. "Miss Tauriel is following the rest of them to make sure they don't come back." It may be a lie, but they all could use the assurance.

He holds out his hand and she takes it, letting him lead her into the kitchen where he sets about cleaning up, getting Bofur to remove the orc corpses and boiling a kettle of water for tea.

"Are you alright?" he asks Sigrid who nods and Bain who offers him a crooked smile that makes him look even more like his father.

By the time he's got the tea steeping the table and benches have been set right and he herds the children onto the benches and pours them all a cup, rummaging through the cupboards until he finds some biscuits to go with them. He wishes he could give them more for all they'd been put through. For all their company had brought down upon their heads.

“Da says your people come from the west,” Telda says as she wraps her hands around the mug he sets in front of her. “From far away, and that’s why we’ve never met a--- a---”

“Hobbit,” he supplies with a gentle smile.

Her answering smile is brilliant. “Yes, a hobbit. What’s it like?”

“Telda,” Sigrid scolds, but it seems half-hearted even to Bilbo. She’s watching him, keen to hear, he can tell.

“It’s alright,” he assures them.  “Your da is right. We don’t often venture east. We hobbits are quite content to stay in our homes and work in our gardens.”

“You have a garden?” It was Sigrid who spoke and she looks on eagerly, and he supposes he’s not really surprised.

“Oh yes, one of the finest, if I do say so myself,” he says and Telda grins and scoots closer to him. “My tomatoes are the best in the westfarthing; prize winning for the last four years. I have a bed filled with lettuce and carrots. Some stalks of corn in the fall. And also pumpkins and squash. But I grow other things too. We hobbits love flowers.”

“Me too,” Telda interjects with a little sigh. “What kind of flowers?”

He smiles and sets his arm around her shoulders. “Oh, so many I can barely name them all. Roses and lilacs. I have honeysuckle that creeps up the side of the hill and blooms in the summer. And of course lavender, but I use that for more than just bouquets. There is gardenia and a flowering cherry tree too. It hasn’t produced any fruit yet, but it might still, and well if it never does it’s still just as beautiful.”

“What else?” Even Bain is focused on him.

“Most hobbits haven’t ever left the Shire, we go to market, visit our families, and take comfort in staying close to home. We are a simple race; we value good food, good drink, and good company over gold and jewels. We take pride in our homes and our gardens, and our trades, if we have them. There’s very few of us who ever desire to leave, or see the outside world.”

“But you’re here,” Bain says. “And with dwarves, the very opposite of everything you’ve described.”

“Well I did say most, not all,” he replied and earns a grin from Bain. “I’ve always had a bit of an adventurous streak, I suppose. I take after my mum in that regard.”

“Did she go adventuring too?” Telda asks and even though she’s still engaged he hears the exhaustion in her voice. Her head is drooping against his shoulder.

“Oh yes, she was quite the adventurous hobbit, though I don’t know if she came this far.”

Telda hums but when he looks at her her eyes have drifted shut and she is slack against his side. Bain comes around the table and gathers her up. “Bed time,” he says and carries her upstairs.

“What about you?” Bilbo asks Sigrid. “Not that I’m trying to send you to bed like a child, most certainly not, but you look a bit done in.”

She smiles, a bit tiredly. “I’ll wait for da.”

She’s worried, and Bilbo doesn’t blame her. Part of him wonders how often she sits up late waiting for him to come home, how many nights she stares out the window and wonders if this will be the time he doesn’t. Such worries always seem to fall on shoulders too young to bear them.

But he can’t change her circumstances, as surely as he hadn’t been able to change his own. So he does the only thing he can. He smiles back at her and holds out his hand for her empty cup. “How about some more tea while we wait?”

Sigrid sets the cup in his hand and he turns back to the kettle. “Thank you, Master Baggins.”

He smiles at her over his shoulder. “You can call me Bilbo.”

They both are finishing their third cup of tea by the time there’s movement at the door. Bard appears first, slowing as he comes in the door, surveying the damage. “What happ---” His eyes fall on Sigrid who has jumped to her feet at his arrival and he pulls her to him. “Sig. Are you alright? Bain and Telda?”

“We’re alright, da,” she assures him but she burrows her face against his chest and hugs him tightly.

“Bilbo?”

The others are looking to him for an explanation and he finds himself swallowing around the realization of just what had happened. What had been so close to happening.

“Orcs,” he manages to say. “Orcs found us here and Kíli was….”

“Kíli! Is he---” Fíli is pushing his way past the rest of the dwarves.

“He’s alright,” Bilbo assures him. “He will be alright,” he amends. He looks over to where the topic of their conversation is asleep, chest rising and falling rhythmically.

“Orcs here?” Bard looks down at his daughter.

“The elves saved us,” she tells him.

“Elves?” Thorin’s voice is almost more disgusted than when he’d heard there had been orcs.

“Yes, Thorin. Elves,” Bilbo suffers out a sigh. “They saved us when we were swarmed upon unawares and…. and they saved your nephew. Well one of them did.”

“Kíli is…?” The concern in Thorin’s face softens him. It pulls back the heavy burden of their quest enough for Bilbo to see the man beneath it all.

“We almost lost the lad,” Oín interrupts, and Bilbo is grateful because the words seem to stick in his throat. “But the elf-maid saved him. Healed him with her elf magic. He’ll be alright now.”

Fíli is already sitting by his brother’s head, hand stroking back the hair from his eyes, his lips moving but voice so soft even Bilbo can’t hear him. He watches their leader follow his golden-haired nephew over to the bed, sees him take Kíli’s hand in his as he pulls his other nephew against him in a one-armed hug.

“Bilbo?”

“Hmmm, yes?” He looks up to Balin who has come to stand beside him.

“Are you alright, laddie?”

He runs his hand through his hair, and blows out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Oh yes, fine, fine. Just need to get some air. I’ll be just—umm—just outside.”

Balin looks like he wants to stop him but instead he only nods.

The night air is thick. Whether it’s the fog rolling in off the lake or just the heavy realization that they had courted death once again and lived to tell the tale Bilbo isn’t quite sure. He takes a deep, shuddering breath.

Somewhere ahead of them, hidden by the darkness, lays a mountain with a fire-breathing dragon at its heart.

 

 

It’s sunlight that wakes him, albeit dulled as it penetrates a layer of cloud that seems to entrench the town.

He had slipped back inside and found himself a corner out of the way to lean into, wrapping his blanket around him as he listened to the dwarves recount their tale of the night’s exploits. Fíli had still been sitting with his brother, head drooping against his chest, eyes closed.

Somewhere between a description of the Master of Laketown’s table manners, which must have been atrocious for the dwarves to comment on it, and the hope to convince him to equip them for their trek to the mountain he had drifted off to sleep.

“Good morning, Mister Bilbo.”

“Telda, good morning, dear heart.”

She has a cup of tea for him and he accepts it graciously.

“I tried to find some honey,” she whispers, as if it is a secret. Her face is apologetic. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh dear, don’t be sorry.” He reaches out and tweaks her chin gently. “My only requirement with tea is that it’s wet.”

Kíli is still asleep but he looks much better, and Fíli nods at Bilbo when he goes to check on them.

“He woke up briefly,” the blond dwarf tells him. “Asked for you but promptly fell back to sleep.”

Bilbo smiles fondly, “He needs all the sleep he can get.” He looks up at Fíli. “How are you?”

“I’m…” Fíli trails off as if he doesn’t know what to say. Bilbo knows the feeling. “Here. And my brother is here, thanks to you.”

Bilbo looks up sharply. “It wasn’t me. Tauriel healed---”

Fíli interrupts him with a short shake of his head. “You were the one that convinced them. That begged them to heal him. Without you I wouldn’t have a brother anymore, Oín assured me of that.”

“Fíli, I--”

Two hands drop onto his shoulders. “I owed you a debt when you saved my uncle. I owe you a far greater one now that you have saved my brother as well.”

 _I love him; of course I’d save him. I’d do anything for him_.

He's saved from coming up with a proper response by the arrival of Oín and Thorin. Their healer takes Kili's vitals, for once seemingly careful not to wake the younger dwarf.

"He'll be right as rain. He just needs as much rest as he can get for now."

Bilbo slips away while they're still talking and he finds a hand slipping into his. Telda is smiling at him and Sigrid is with her. "We're going to the market, do you want to come?"

A bit of air sounds heavenly and it doesn't take much persuading before he finds himself wandering through the limited market of Laketown with the girls on either side of him.

Telda tells him about each vendor, and about their wares, her voice never wavering. She tells him about how the spice vendor gets his wares in from the east, when the caravans come through twice a year. They're lucky, she tells him. They just got new things in last week. The fruits and vegetables come in more often, but the best of the lot is expensive.

"We usually wait to buy. Sometimes the next week they're not quite as expensive," she tells him. She doesn’t seem bothered; it’s the way it has always been. But Bilbo feels his heart clench. He wishes things were better for them.

“What’s your favorite?” he asks and Telda doesn’t hesitate to tell him that she loves oranges. And Bain does too. When he looks to Sigrid she pauses only a moment before telling him she loves the sweet pears tucked at the back of the display.

In his pocket, tucked in among the gold ring are some coins, the ones that had survived the trip thus far. They will serve well enough here where few have more than a few bits of copper to spare. He closes his fingers around them and pulls them out, counting out enough for an armful of the fruit---”And some vegetables,” he tells the vendor, pointing to several different kinds. “For dinner tonight. I’ll be cooking you all a meal, as thanks for letting us impose.” There’s no hesitation. It’s the least he can do for these children.

Sigrid looks like she wants to protest but Telda interrupts. “What are you going to make?”

“I think a stew would do quite well,” he tells her. “And there will be enough to have for breakfast—so long as we don’t let Bombur eat it all.”

Telda giggles and helps gather up the bundle of vegetables the vendor has supplied them with.

The rest of their trip is spent procuring other ingredients; meat, seasonings, flour, sugar, and salt. Fresh tea and honey. And if he slips in a couple packets of sweets for the girls and Bain then no one will be the wiser.

They’re on their way back when a leather works stall catches his eye. The majority of his wares are made for work, but not all. In a basket of odds and ends there is a finely tooled bracelet, with intricate vines and flowers pressed into the leather.

“Oh that’s pretty,” Sigrid says. “Do flowers mean something special, Mister Bilbo?”

He nods. “In the Shire flowers are a big thing,” he tells them. “Every hobbit loves them, and they are as important to us as beads are to dwarves.”

“Beads? Dwarves treasure beads?”

It was out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying.

“They do,” he says with a sigh. “I shouldn’t have told you that, you see. They’re very secretive. I shouldn’t even know.”

“Oh we’ll keep it a secret, Mister Bilbo!” Telda promises. “Cross my heart!”

“So who are you buying the bracelet for?”

“Oh! No! No… I… uhm…” He stutters and is sure his face flushes an impressive shade of red. “It’s just I shouldn’t think I’ll be having time to make a flower chain with real flowers anytime soon. I suppose it reminds me a bit of home,” he finishes lamely.

The two sisters share a knowing smile. “Of course. It makes perfect sense,” Sigrid replies graciously and herds Telda out while Bilbo pays for the bracelet. When he emerges it has disappeared into one of his pockets.

“Alright girls, let’s be off.”

 

 

When Kíli comes awake again in those slow moments between sleep and opening his eyes he thinks he must have died and returned to a better time. It smells like Bilbo’s smial, like a home-cooked meal and pipeweed and the faintest hint of herbs. There’s the clank of wood against metal, the sound of a spoon bumping against the side of a pot. He hears the murmur of voices, not quiet but still distant as his body forces itself awake.

“That smells delicious, Mister Bilbo!”

“Thank you, dear heart.”

The voice is enough to motivate Kíli to wrestle his eyes open even though his body still feels traitorously weak.

Bilbo is at the hearth, a young girl—the bowman’s daughter—beside him. His brother is asleep in a chair beside him, chin tucked against his chest. There are others nearby, he can hear them, but he can’t see them.

He tries to speak but his throat is dry so it takes a few tries before he is able, making him swallow thickly against the lump in his throat. “What’s for dinner?”

His voice is soft but it’s enough to make Bilbo whirl around from the stove and to wake Fíli with a start, making him fall off the chair with a resounding crash. But it isn’t long before they’re both standing over him, peering down at him with worried eyes.

“My two favorite people.”

Fíli’s face softens, and he laughs. “Welcome back, brother.”

“I’ve been back,” Kíli replies and grins.

“Next time tell us before you leave, yes?” Fíli suggests and they both notice the way Bilbo’s eyes drop to where his hands are bunched in the quilts. “Anyway, now that you’re awake I’m going to head off to the baths.” He gives an indelicate sniff. “You need them too, but seeing as you’re stuck in bed until Oín says otherwise you’ll have to wait.”

Fíli bends and presses his forehead to his brother’s briefly before he leaves the two, calling for some of the others to join him.

When the doors bang shut behind them Kíli reaches for Bilbo’s hand and squeezes it gently. “See, I told you it was nothing.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and he knows it as soon as the words are out of his mouth but he’d just wanted to lighten the mood. He’d wanted to make Bilbo smile.

Of course, as luck would have it, it has the exact opposite effect.

The hobbit’s face crumples and he drops into the chair Fíli had vacated. His two hands wrap around Kíli’s one and he leans forward to press his face against their clasped fingers.

“I can’t—I can’t—” he whispers brokenly, and Kíli clenches his hand around Bilbo’s. “I can’t lose you Kíli. I can’t.”

Kíli breathes out a shaky laugh, having expected something so much worse. He gently frees his hand and cups Bilbo’s cheek, wiping away a stray tear with the pad of his thumb. “You won’t Bilbo. I’m right here.”

“You almost weren’t. You almost disappeared right before my eyes.”

“But I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

The hobbit looks at him then, eyes watery and sad beyond measure. “You can’t make promises like that, Kíli. No one can.”

He’s right; Kíli knows he is, but he doesn’t want to admit it. “I just have, Bilbo, I’m not leaving.  I—” _I love you_. He wants to tell him. He wants to say those simple little words, but that little voice whispers at him that he’ll regret it. _Let it be_ , it warns him.

“What?”

Bilbo is looking at him, hazel eyes soft and focused on him. Kíli forces a smile. “It’s nothing.”

“Mister Bilbo, I think your stew is about to burn,” Telda calls from the kitchen.

“I’ll be right there, dear heart,” he replies and then looks back down at Kíli for a long moment, fingers brushing against Kíli’s forehead ever so softly. “Please don’t scare me like that again. I’m not sure my heart can take it.”

Kíli squeezes his hand as he stands and moves to leave. “Your heart is safe with me.”

The smile Bilbo gives him is soft, but it’s fond and it reaches the corners of his eyes.

“Stew for dinner. I’ll bring you some as soon as it’s ready.”

_I love you, Bilbo._


	13. These Words You Speak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our final chapter in Laketown has arrived, after this the company will set off for Erebor and everything will begin to crumble. 
> 
> I'm not exactly pleased with this chapter but I wanted to get it out so I could move on since I was just sitting on it. Sorry.

The rest of their stay in Laketown is far better than the first, at least in Kíli’s opinion.

They have moved to a house provided by the Master and there the beds are soft and the food and drink plentiful. Oín still makes him stay indoors, which is especially trying when Bilbo slips away with a smile and promise to be back soon. Kíli doesn’t begrudge his desire to check in on Bard’s children, but he does wish he could go along.  Maybe in the darkened corners or hidden crooks between buildings he could sneak a kiss more easily than he could here.

“He’ll be back soon enough,” Fíli says from his place at the foot of the bed, eyes focused on the knife he’s sharpening. He thinks he knows his little brother so well.

“I know!” Kíli protests and kicks his brother for good measure.

“Steady on!” Fíli yelps. “You’ll take my finger off!”

“And you’ll deserve it.”

His brother smirks at him and goes back to work.

“Fí.”

His brother hums out an acknowledgment.

“I had a…dream, I guess.”

Fíli doesn’t look up at him, but decades have taught him that he holds his attention at least somewhat. “Yeah? About what? If it’s about Bilbo I don’t want to know the dirty detai—”

“It’s not!” Kíli interrupts, glad his brother’s focus is on his hands instead of the way his cheeks have flushed red. “It was when I was sick.”

“It’s not about that elf is it? Uncle would have a coronary. I mean I know her hair is long and she knows how to wield a bow, but—”

“Fíli!”

The urgency in his voice finally catches his brother’s complete attention and Fíli looks up. “Kíli, what is it?”

In a hushed tone he tells his brother about the dream, about how the voices had told him he would bring only folly upon them with his weakness. He told his brother about how his heartstone had burned red hot in his palm as the darkness had spilled from its center.

“I’m sure it was just a dream, Kí. You know how fevers can make you dream weird things.”

“Can they leave a burn on your hand?” he asks and holds out his palm to his brother. The center of his palm is an angry red. Fíli stares at it before he looks up, “Is it—?”

“The same size and shape as that blasted stone? Yes.”

“Kíli, it’s not—you know it’s not a reflection on you,” Fíli has told him that a hundred times.

“They can’t be a reflection of their dwarrows when they’re whole and pure, brother, and not when they’re cracked and broken. It has to work both ways.” He fishes the stone out from his pocket and holds it up, studying it, as if he hadn’t memorized its surface decades ago. “It’s a reflection of me.”

“Look we’ve been over this.” Kili frowns at him and he knows his skepticism is written all over his face. “I know you don’t believe me but you aren’t broken.”

“Am I not?”

“Not what?”

They both start and look to Bilbo who has appeared soundlessly at the table nearby; unloading a bag of items he must have bought at the market. He looks up from his task. “Well?”

An uncomfortably long moment passes before Fíli claps his brother on the shoulder. “He was saying he was plenty clean after I told him he’s in sore need of a bath.”

Bilbo looks between the two suspiciously, as if he knows he’s being lied to. Whether he actually knows or not he lets it go. “I have to agree with your brother. You do desperately need a bath.”

Kíli plays along, not ready to admit the truth. Bilbo knows nothing of heartstones and best it stay that way. “It’s not that bad.”

Bilbo shakes his head. “It is,” he insists. “And since you’re fit enough to get out of bed the only place you’re going is into a tub of hot water.”

“Only if you come with me,” Kíli protests, putting on his best pleading face.

Bilbo reaches out and flicks the end of his nose lightly. “If that’s what it takes in order for me to stop having to hold my breath around you I will heartily agree,” he teases.

“You’re a saint, Bilbo,” Fíli says, clapping the hobbit on the shoulder. “I’m off to make sure Uncle hasn’t gotten lost. I’ll see you both later.”

“Good luck,” Bilbo says as he goes to rummage through a cupboard for soap and towels.

Fíli chuckles and hands the hobbit an extra bar of soap with a wink. “And to you.”

The bathhouse is empty when they arrive, and despite his pleading Kíli is pushed unceremoniously into the water alone. It takes three scrubs downs and four dunkings before Bilbo is satisfied enough to let Kíli out of the water. “Admit it, you feel better”

“I admit nothing!” Kíli teases and shakes his head, sending water flying and making Bilbo protest and dance out of the way.

“You are a monster!”

Kíli laughs because his hobbit knows him well. “Maybe a little.”

Bilbo holds out his hand and has it taken eagerly; Kíli seizes the opportunity to twine their fingers together. “Despite the fact that you’re clean, your hair is still a rat’s nest and I have it on good authority we’re supposed to all meet with the master before we depart in the morning. I’ll not have my favorite dwarf looking like a bird’s nested in his hair.”

Even though he won’t protest Bilbo fixing his hair he bends down to sneak a kiss. “Radagast pulls it off quite well.”

“ _That_ is debatable.”

When they’re back at the house and settled in the room Bilbo had been offered Kíli lays with his head in Bilbo’s lap. His hair is still damp and the comb has been abandoned in favor of Bilbo using his fingers to tease apart the tangled mess of his hair. Kíli is nearly purring under the ministration.

"I--" Kíli begins, but then stops and shakes his head slightly, offering Bilbo a bright grin. "Never mind."

Every other time Bilbo has let it slide because there has always been something pressing or snapping at their heels, but not this time. They’re alone and they have the time and Kíli knows he’s caught when Bilbo only frowns down at him.

"You do that a lot, you know," Bilbo says, and Kíli looks up at him, hoping if he looks confused the subject might still be dropped.

"Do what?"

Bilbo gives him a look that says he knows that Kíli knows what he means but continues on as if he doesn't. "You always start to say something and then stop like you think I won't want to hear it."

Kíli drops his gaze and offers him a one-shouldered shrug, which is awkward in his position. "It's a habit," he says. "The things I say, the things I want to say, they aren't always met with great enthusiasm from the others. To my kin I am quite strange and improper."

Bilbo doesn't make a face or move to leave instead he gives Kíli a nod that speaks of understanding and leans forward slightly, over him. "I’m quite strange and improper too. And I can only imagine what the Shire will think of me after this.” He tugs on a lock of Kíli’s hair. “But you can tell me." He says it honestly and with a smile. "If you want to, that is."

It’s a small gesture, and no great feat but it means more to Kíli then Bilbo could possibly know. It’s as if some part of him gets it. All these years and no one has quite spoken to him the way Bilbo does. It’s not the words; it’s the fact that he understands. He’s been waiting seventy years for someone like Bilbo, and here in this miserable town, on this quest for lost glory, he’s finally found someone who grants him some sliver of peace. “I missed you.”

They weren’t the words either was expecting to hear.

“I’ve been right here,” Bilbo says but his voice catches. They had been within reach of each other this whole time, but they both seemed to know that Kíli had almost slipped right through Bilbo’s fingers. It makes the words stick in their throats and haunts the back of their minds.

Bilbo tugs on a lock of the dwarf’s hair. “I’m right here.”

Kíli pulls him down almost on top of him and instead of protesting Bilbo only sighs as the dwarf nudges his lips gently with his own. “Yes, you are.”

Neither knows just what possesses the other, or robs themselves of their own propriety, but Bilbo throws his arms around the dwarf’s neck and hugs him tightly, and it takes only a moment of surprised hesitation before Kíli wraps his arms around the hobbit too. Who cares that they could be caught at any moment? Finally they have a moment to themselves, and they will take it for all it’s worth.

“I’m alright, Bilbo,” Kíli whispers. “I’m alright.”

Bilbo nods against the warmth of Kíli’s skin, holding on and savoring the fact that right now they are both alive and as well as they can be. Death is not bearing down on them here. Not yet.

But they don’t have long.

Not long at all.


	14. The Mountain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They reach the mountain. Come what may.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It should be noted that I am playing with the details of the movie and book verse. Obviously. If you don't like the things I'm stretching and bending then you are free to quit reading at any point. But, with that being said, I do hope you enjoy what I've been doing and no matter how long it takes me I will finish this. Don't worry about that! :D

Erebor. Their home.

The mountain paints an imposing picture as it looms over them. Now that they’re here, standing within a stone’s throw of it Kíli’s not so sure this is what he was expecting. This entire time he thought there would be some grand revelation upon seeing it. He thought everything would all click into place.

But here he is and there it stands and he feels exactly the same; like nothing has changed at all.

“What’s that?”

Bilbo’s voice draws him from his thoughts and reminds him that some things have changed, just not the things he expected. His hobbit is standing between Balin and his uncle, still wearing the blue coat Bard and his children had gifted him.  

“That, my lad, is the desolation.”

The ruins of Dale lay before them, a solemn reminder that the dwarves of Erebor were not the only ones to suffer the dragon’s wrath all those many years ago. Countless lives had been lost there too when the town had burned with dragon fire. But his uncle’s eyes lie beyond that. Where they used to drift to a distant peak a world away now their focus is so much closer. He looks towards the front gates. The crumbled, charred ruin of his past laid bare before them.

_The mountains trembles beneath the dragon’s assault, and it fills with smoke and flame and fear. People are screaming, walls are crumbling, his kin are fleeing. A prosperous age is dying before their very eyes._

_The dragon roars his triumph as he rolls in a hall of gold. A mountain king faces down a crimson serpent, stunned as the golden eyes fix on him and the jewel that glitters in his hands. The beast loves gold, but he knows a pretty stone when he sees one and his greed is as deep as the Sundering Seas. When it tumbles from the king’s hand and is lost within a swatch of gold the dragon knows he has acquired the mountain’s heart. The line of Durin is homeless, and were it not for the bravery of the young heir they would have been kingless as well._

_The great gates of Erebor crumble behind them as they flee with little more than their lives._

Kíli had heard his mother recall the memory, heard his uncle plead for her to drop it. The pain was still too fresh. He could hear it in Thorin’s voice. But when the fire burned low and the house was quiet they recalled their loss in low tones that they thought Kíli and Fíli wouldn’t hear.

But they did.

“We must find the hidden door.”

Thorin’s words spur them into action, though for all that they are close it is subdued. They have journeyed across the whole of Middle Earth and yet the outcome of the quest still lies in question. It takes the shape of a mountain, and may hold a dragon at its center.

The others begin to follow the path down the rock face, but Bilbo stands frozen, eyes distant but not fond. He’s not thinking of a warm hearth or beloved home. The coming storm is brewing on his face.

Kíli rests his hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”

Bilbo exhales, breath shuddering against the silence. Not even a thrush is crying. “I’ve seen many things; I’ve lost things, family…but this…” he trails off with a shake of his head. “I can’t fathom the loss. Not even a little.”

Kíli wishes he could give Bilbo something, some reassurance, but any words he could muster would seem empty. So instead he presses his mouth to Bilbo’s curls and he is grateful for the way the hobbit’s arm snakes around his waist. It makes him feel likes he’s needed maybe just as much as he’s in need.  He wishes this were all over, that they were standing on the other side of this quest and still in one piece. Was it too much to hope that it might turn out alright?

“I guess we should probably follow,” Bilbo finally says, face still pressed into the fabric of Kíli’s tunic.

“The sooner we do, the sooner we can end this,” Kíli whispers.

He wishes for it even if he’s not sure what the end will bring.

 

 

 

The climb up the hidden stair is so very trying.

The stone is jagged and uneven. It bruises his hands and wears his skin to blisters. Even though it was designed for a race not much bigger than himself Bilbo finds himself struggling. About halfway up he makes the mistake of looking over his shoulder and feels his stomach curl into a knot at the height. If he were to fall… No, he can’t think like that.

Kíli was a constant presence at his back, his hands there to steady Bilbo whenever his foot slipped.

“Steady there, Bilbo,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you.”

It seems to take forever before they tumble out onto the ledge to lie panting from their ascent.

“The map says it should be here,” Thorin announces, studying the parchment in his hands.

“And Durin’s day is tomorrow,” Balin adds from his elbow.

It is decided that they will camp here, where the ledge is widest, and wait for the morning to reveal their way into the mountain. It’s a relief, though Bilbo won’t say it aloud. At least he has a few more hours before he must face down death again.

Their party is subdued, dinner is whatever food has survived the trek from Laketown. They don’t light a fire for fear of waking the dragon and so luxuries like tea and a hot meal are forgone. When they lay out their bedrolls Bilbo lies there with his arms around his knees, eyes wide and unseeing. What awaits them? What will happen?  

Kíli curls up against his back, his warmth a quiet comfort.

“What will we find in there?” Bilbo asks in a whisper, taking Kíli’s hand where it’s curled over his stomach.

He feels Kíli shrug and scoot a little closer, form melding to Bilbo’s as the darkness covers them. “I don’t know.”

Kíli’s fingers are warm between his and Bilbo closes his eyes as he memorizes the feel of them tangled together. The calluses. The lines. The comfort of them.

“What do you want to find in there?” he asks finally.

Kíli is silent for a long time, bowing his head forward against Bilbo’s shoulder. “I don’t know,” he finally admits.

There’s uncertainty in his voice and an emotion Bilbo can’t quite name.

He rolls over, turning in Kíli’s arms and burrowing his face in the dwarf’s neck.

“Me neither.”

 

 

 

That night he dreams of a mountain rising up above him.

_They are there, at the door, and it lies open inky darkness spilling forth like pools of ink._

_He watches his brother disappear, a smile thrown back at him over his shoulder blue eyes for once not haunted by the weight of a legend that seems larger than life._

_“C’mon brother, our destiny awaits us.” His voice is an echo as he melts out of sight._

_“Kíli.” Thorin is looking at him, the disappointment that normally draws lines at the corners of his eyes smoothed out. He is almost smiling. “This way.”_

_He reaches out towards his uncle, trying to follow. He wants to follow._

_But his feet are like lead and his heartstone burns in his palm._

_“Kíli?”_

_“I—I can’t.”_

_He holds out his palm, the stone glowing hot in its center._

_“It’s broken,” Thorin says, as if he didn’t know._

_“Cracked.”_

_His uncle turns and Mahal help him, Kíli wishes he wouldn’t turn his back on him. Please don’t turn away from me, Kíli wants to beg him._

_“If Erebor will not take you…”_

_The mountain looms above him, menacing and unwelcoming, and he is left alone._

He awakens before the rest of them, Bilbo still curled by his side. His breath catches in his throat and burns his lungs while he stares up into the darkness, knowing above him stands the mountain that he’d just seen behind his eyes.

Bilbo makes a soft noise and shifts, rolling onto his side so he can look up at him, “Kíli? What’s wrong? Is your leg troubling you?” His voice is soft, so soft he almost misses the question. The hand on his thigh is tentative but it is not the remnants of his wound that pains him.

“Nothing, it’s nothing Bilbo. I’m alright.”

Fingers thread through his and tug them up so they’re resting against the smaller man’s chest, over his heart. “Come here,” he murmurs and Kíli can’t deny him his request. He doesn’t even want to. He tucks himself around the hobbit and presses his forehead against Bilbo’s. “You can tell me anything, Kíli. I would help you bear these troubles that burden you.”

“It was just a bad dream.” And y _ou have enough to bear, Bilbo,_ he thinks to himself.

“Call it what you will, sometimes it helps to talk about them,” Bilbo insists and Kíli feels the hobbit’s lips against his chin.

“It was just a nightmare,” he murmurs.

“Mmmhmm, about what?”

Bilbo’s fingers tangle in Kíli’s hair and give it a gentle tug when he doesn’t answer.

The words fall out of him in a rush, whispered as they are. "I dreamed that the mountain would not take me, that my heartstone burned like fire in my palm and would not let me enter. I dreamed that my uncle turned away from me and let the mountain's judgment stand." He takes a sharp breath and then smiles at Bilbo. "It was just a stupid dream. Do not trouble yourself over it."

Fingers touch his cheek and pull his chin so the hobbit can kiss him gently once, twice, and then a third time as if for good measure. "Your uncle would never leave you behind, Kíli. Nor would your brother. And even if the mountain will not take you, you must know that there will always be a round, green door unlocked for you."

There is no ridicule, no jests at his expense, only an unexpected sincerity.

"It's the home I've been told of all my life," he continues. "The mountain where we belong. I've heard tell of it thousands of times and I feel like I've spent years dreaming of it. Of the grand halls, the mines, the rivers of gold and mithril that run to the very heart of it. And now that I'm here...now that we're here..."

He trails off and hugs the smaller man closer.

"It will be alright," Bilbo murmurs against his ear, gently nuzzling him, and he wants so badly to believe him. "It has to be."

 

 

 

When dawn finally breaks the mountain does not reveal its secret, and no amount of Dwalin's thumping or Nori's quick fingers, trailing over every ledge and crevice can find it. The morning is spent in ever growing frustration, but the panic does not set in quite yet. No, not until well after midday when the sun sinks ever lower and no reading of the map, nor recalling of what Elrond had said makes any difference.

Bilbo is sitting against the far wall, out of the way and mostly out of sight. There is little he can do except to let the dwarves search, even though all of their searching yields nothing.

The door does not appear and the sun does not slow its descent.

"It must be here," Thorin says, looking to Balin, looking past him as the sun sinks behind the distant horizon. He turns to the others. "We're losing the light, break it down!"

And they try. They try until the axes the men of Laketown had given them are nothing but splinters, until they’re panting from their effort.

"You can't break it down," Balin tells him, almost gently. "The door is sealed. It cannot be opened by force."

Thorin's face falls as surely as the sun does, his fist clenches around the map that they had hedged all of their bets on. "What did we miss? Tell me Balin."

But there are no good answers. None that will ease the loss in the slightest. "That's the end of it," Balin tells him gently. 

"Wait a minute, you're giving up?" Bilbo asks, rising to his feet. "After we've come all this way."

"We've lost the light lad, there's nothing to be done."

They’ve come so far, they’ve outrun wargs, and managed to not be smashed by stone giants. They fell into the deep tunnels of the Misty Mountains and somehow escaped those too. They came all this way on eagles, and by pony back, and even in barrels, and they were giving up now? Here on the very doorstep they had been searching for? Bilbo looks around. To anyone. “There must be another way.”

Balin sets his hand on his shoulder. “It was the only way.”

The dwarves begin the slow descent down the hidden stair and Bilbo feels his desperation rise. They'd come all this way. Kíli had come all this way. "Kíli---"

There's a smile on Kíli's face, but it's filled with all manner of emotions a smile should never hold. "Maybe it's for the best, Bilbo. This just saves us from...everything."

It was such a heavy word.

 _There could be a dragon behind this very wall_ , he thinks, settling against the stone with a sigh. _There could be death, pain, heartbreak._ He closes his eyes. “Oh, but there could be a home too.” _There could be Kíli’s happy ending, the life he longs for. Kíli deserves that. Every member of the company deserves that._

_"Fate is with you, Thorin Oakenshield," Elrond had said. "As luck would have it the same moon shines upon us tonight."_

"Moon runes," Bilbo breathes, watching the curve of silver peek out from among the clouds. He whirls on the stone wall and there, near his hand is what they had been searching for. "The keyhole."

There’s a way in. They’re closer than ever.

“Come back!” he shouts even as he scrambles to find the key he had seen Thorin drop. “It’s here! The keyhole! Come back!”

He knows he’s not making much sense and they probably can’t hear him but he doesn’t care, he has to find the key before their door disappears, he has to---“Looking for this?”

Kíli is holding the key and smiling at Bilbo. “We found it, Kíli,” Bilbo tells him.

“No, Bilbo. You found it.”

“Keen eyes, Master Burglar,” Thorin says with a fondness not often given. The key exchanges hands and the entire company holds its breath as he turns over the key and pushes against the stone wall.

With a shuddering groan it gives way.

“We’ve done it,” Kíli says in disbelief as he watches Thorin disappear through the doorway, then Balin. He looks at his brother then at Bilbo. “We’re really here.”

Fíli clasps his little brother’s shoulder. “C’mon Ki, this is the day we’ve dreamed of.”

Bilbo watches the brothers, watches Kíli stare up at the mountain that had haunted him the night before. Not all dreams sat easy on the mind. Bilbo knew that only too well. Kili’s hand clenches in his pocket, wrapped around his heartstone, if Bilbo were to guess.

But dreams are not always foretellers of the future and Kíli will not do this alone.

“What do you say?” he asks softly, reaching out to twine his fingers through Kíli’s. “Shall we follow? Together?”

Kíli smiles down at him and squeezes his hand ever so gently.

“Together.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying quite hard to not write these characters too OOC even in this canon-divergence story. Hopefully it's not too bad! Thanks for reading!


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